india, part 1

Friends, I finally feel able to breathe.

Today I made myself a pot of the Tulsi Ginger tea I bought in India.  Allow me to pour you a virtual cup:

So, let's sit here together, in my rain splattered courtyard garden, our hands cupped around our mugs of spicy warm tea, and I'll tell you all about my trip to India.  It was only last month, but it feels....well, it's July next week, need I say more?

Would you like a piece of chocolate cake too?

Sorry, I couldn't wait! How rude of me :) 

Watching the rain fall down here, it amazes me that last month I was in a magical place where my clothes were damp with sweat rather than rain.  My bones are aching for the warmth.

Oh, India!  Where do I start?

I had only a week in this enchanting, haunting and intense place; it was a constant assault on the senses.  To anyone going to India, I would say "believe everything you've heard, and then forget it".  In many ways it was exactly what I thought it would be, and yet it challenged and surpassed every expectation.

My India journey began when I travelled with colleagues to the city of Hyderabad.  I'd say Hyderabad is the Canberra of India - quite an important city for business and some rather lovely sights and things to do.....and lots of roundabouts :) 

Walking outside the airport I was immediately hit with the overpowering, bone drenching heat.  The sky sparkled.  The air smelled of spices, cooking oil and dust.  There was a McDonalds outside the airport, advertising the delights of McAloo.  I wasn't tempted!

Our hotel had arranged a taxi to collect us - a sign saying "Mr Philippa Moore" greeted me as I walked outside!  We rolled out of the airport and on to the highway towards the city.  Initially it looked like any other highway, just with tropical looking trees and shrubs flowering on the sides of the road, and women in jewel coloured sarees sweeping the verges with long handbrushes.

The highway eventually morphed into a smaller road that led into the city.  The buildings were dilapidated but fully functioning - there were sweet shops, wine shops, barbers, welders and other merchants whose speciality wasn't obvious (!) - alongside shanty towns of corrugated iron and bright blue tarp sheets.  There were cows with giant curved horns being led down the side of the road, people carrying baskets on their heads, digging in the dirt, tending fires, or smashing bricks neatly.  Herds of goats nosed around in the neat piles of garbage.  Women in bright sarees sat in a neat line for the bus.  And then some temples came into view, painted the most incredible candy pinks, greens, purples, blues and yellows; their pillars, doors and windows adorned with garlands of flowers, wisps of incense smoke drifting in the air, and statues of gods and goddesses smiling broadly outwards.

The road snaked in between what the taxi driver told us was Old and New Hyderabad - more colonial looking sandstone buildings on one side and more square, still-being-constructed white buildings on the other.  The driver also pointed out the ancient fort which is one of the main attractions of the city.  As we got further in, the traffic started getting thicker and more chaotic.  The way people drive in India is that if there is a space they can drive into and overtake the car in front of them with, even if it's on the other side of the road, they do it!  They just beep the horn as they do it (instead of indicating)!  As you can imagine, there is a lot of noise on the roads!! Rickshaws and motorbikes carrying up to four people were weaving in and out of the lines of cars - I saw a little family on one! - as the traffic carried on  past the roundabouts, parks, flower-adorned public statues, temples, to the Marriott Hotel which is situated by the Sagar Lake, a large man made lake.  There was also a walled graveyard opposite the hotel which had "graveyard - do not urinate on this wall" spray painted across it several times!

The Marriott was a compound unto itself.  Before entering the grounds the car was searched with a reflector and a sniffer dog.  Then, once the car pulled up to the entrance, our bags were put through a scanning machine like the ones at airport security, and men and women were taken off separately one at a time to a curtained off area where we were individually scanned!  Prashant, my colleague, said all hotels had tightened their security following the terrorist attacks in Mumbai in 2008.  But once we were inside it was cool and beautiful, and the heat and dust were replaced with smells of frangipani and lemon.  A fountain flowed merrily in the middle of the reception area.

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We checked in and then were escorted to our rooms.  My room was large and spacious, with the most comfortable bed I've slept on in years, made with luxurious linens, with a lovely view of the graveyard! (my colleagues were on the other side and had a pool view!)

I was utterly enchanted!

My colleagues who had flown over with me from London desperately wanted to sleep, as did I - it was about 6am UK time by this point and we had basically been up all night! We'd left London at about 2pm the previous day, stopped in Dubai and then connected to Hyderabad from there, so it was the best part of 16 hours travelling.  I let myself sleep for 2 hours and then got up again, as groggy as I was, to get myself on Indian time.  It always works!

So after waking up from my power nap, I had a small lunch in the hotel restaurant - my first Indian food in India!  I had a simple meal of rice, dhal and paneer, and they made me some fresh naan bread in their tandoor.  I felt surprisingly ok on so little sleep!  And brushing my teeth with bottled water took some getting used to, I kept forgetting and rinsed my brush under the tap!  I also got a funny call from the concierge at the hotel, they were updating my profile on the hotel database.  I got asked - "what is your favourite fruit Miss Moore?  And what is your favourite drink?  Do you like music?  Do you like to party?  And what is your favourite travel destination?"  I half expected a crate of mangoes and gin and tonics to appear outside my room! Heh heh!

View of the city and lake from the hotel

 I had an early night and was awake very early the next morning, so decided to haul myself up to the hotel gym where I cranked out an impressive 10k on the treadmill - I don't know where I got the energy from!  It was so damn hot in the gym, even with air conditioning.  Then I met my colleagues for breakfast, where I was cooked a traditional dosa - a pancake, stuffed with curried potato.  They brought over a spicy red lentil soup to go with it.  I dipped bites of the pancake into a coconut chutney, then into the soup, then ate them.  It was delicious but most unusual, more like lunch than breakfast! 

The work side of things went very well - my talk was on the first day of the conference and things went very smoothly!  We were given a traditional welcome, as you can see from the photo of me below.  The red dot on the space between my eyebrows is called "tilak".   This red mark is regarded as the sign of good wishes, blessings and fortune.  We also were given a traditional garland of flowers, which symbolise love and respect.  I thought it was so wonderful and didn't take my garland off for the whole day, even though the flowers had started to wilt in the heat.

That evening I relaxed with my work colleagues - they were very nervous about getting food poisoning so we just stuck to the hotel restaurant and entertainment.  We ate beautiful food - the fresh naan was the highlight for me, it was more like pastry than bread!  Yummo!

And we went for a swim in the pool after dark, which was lit up with tiny lights like fireflies.  All the while we could hear the honking and hooting from the cars and rickshaws on the surrounding streets.

On the second day I woke up feeling a bit ordinary, like I had a cold coming.   I was a bit grumpy about it, especially seeing as I was about to head off on my own travels and didn't want to be sick for them.  But I thought about it and actually heard a message from my body (weird I know!) saying "hey! You've given me a long haul flight, plus hardly any sleep, plus a 10k run, plus indian stomach antibiotics, plus malaria pills, plus all the curry you can handle....what do you expect?!" so I stopped moping, chilled out and felt a lot better. Choose your thoughts like you would your clothes, etc :)

Yes, I had been rereading Eat Pray Love too!  It put me in a very reflective mood.

After we finished the conference on Day 2, we were taken to a few shops around Hyderabad that had been recommended to us - first of all we stopped off at Febindia, which had shelves and shelves of clothes, tablecloths, napkins, cushion covers and lots of teas, incense and other things.  The lights went off in the shop about three times while we were in there, due to the generator overheating!  I got a beaded top and two tins of tea, (including the ginger one we're drinking) and it came to about £9.  

Then we went to a strange jewellery shop where my colleagues bought some pearls! It reminded me of Argos because it was so busy! But instead of flipping through the sacred catalogue of all knowledge (for all you Bill Bailey fans out there!) you were taken to a seat and the salespeople brought all the pearls out to you. There were three guys in the corner restringing pearls under lamplights with tiny scissors and another man walking around with tiny silver cups of chai for the customers.

The next day we were taken early to the Hyderabad airport - my colleagues were going back to Dubai, I was heading on to Goa for a little holiday!  I was really excited to see a bit more of India.  The real India, I thought.  I was already quite enchanted by it, but I was well aware that it's easy to be enchanted by a place when you're viewing it through the lens of a five star Western style hotel.  

And so I was on my own.  I caught a flight to Bangalore, where I waited for a few hours, and entertained myself by looking at all the books in the shops, they were some gems like this one:

And this one!

I then caught my flight to Goa from there.  The food on the planes was fantastic! Paneer, rice, roti bread, and a lovely pineapple sambal.  I couldn't get enough of the stuff!  Qantas, take note!  Why can't all airline food be like this? :)

When I finally emerged from the airport at Goa, there was a guy with a sign with my name on it and we headed down to Palolem Beach, it was about an hour's drive from the airport.  The urban highways and residential developments slowly became a thicker, greener, almost jungle like landscape.  It was a really interesting drive - I saw lots of lorries that were decorated with pictures of gods and goddesses, and lots of "Jesus Saves" lorries too (Goa is a predominantly Christian area of India, I was told).  In the back of one truck, there were about four workers having a nap on top of the bags of concrete.

And I almost squealed with delight when I saw an elephant walking along the side of the road next to the car!  They are working animals in this area, I think my driver said they were from the spice farm.  The only time I've ever seen elephants is in a zoo, it was amazing to see one walking along the road, and another one further down, waiting patiently by a shop while it's owner had a chai :) 

Finally we arrived in the village of Palolem, one of the few parts of Goa still open before monsoon season hits.  There was no sign that bad weather was on the way, it was a sticky 36 degrees each day that I was there!  I signed in at the resort office - I loved how they wrote everything in a book, nothing was done on a computer - and then I was shown to my little beach cottage!  I loved it on sight:

It was very basic inside, but it had air conditioning!  The door was locked with an intricate padlock that reminded me of the one that went on my high school locker.

The grounds of the resort were magnificent, filled with lush flowers and plants, even coconut trees.  It was paradise.

The beach was gorgeous.  I don't really appreciate how much I miss the ocean, living in London.  The Thames doesn't quite cut it sometimes. The sands were silky white, burning hot after a day's sun, littered with boats and herds of cows sunbathing.  The sun was starting to dip behind the hills, streaking the sky peach and bronze.

I had been feeling quite unwell that day, so I had another early night, found myself awake at 3am and listened to some Book Show podcasts to get me back to sleep, and woke up the next morning feeling fantastic.  I washed briefly with my bucket and jug (it was surprisingly fun and refreshing - and the thing was, I was sweaty and grubby again the minute I stepped outside!) and then spent the majority of the day on the beach, eating, drinking, writing and taking it all in.  I had a masala omelette and toast for breakfast, and a watermelon juice (which was beautiful!) and then before I knew it, a few hours had passed and I was hungry again, so I had some beer and the most beautiful curry I think I've had in my life. Everything was so fresh and fragrant.

I wrote and watched people on the beach.  There were women walking around with jewellery and bright sparkly scarves and fabrics to sell, and one woman was doing henna tattoos.  She spent about an hour on one girl's shoulder.  I watched, transfixed.

I walked the entire length and breadth of Palolem beach:

I ended up doing a 2 hour one-on-one yoga class on a cliff at sunset - I had seen signs for the class, but when I got to the end of the beach there was no obvious sign where the class actually was.  Eventually a passerby showed me - it was quite a trek!  It reminded me of the winding, rocky beaches near where I spent some years of my childhood in Cygnet, south of Hobart.  I was convinced I was wandering through someones backyard, but my chaperone didn't seem phased.  Eventually he pointed to a hill in the distance and left me to it!  Eventually I saw this sign:

And climbed my way to the top!

It was a glorious view from that clifftop.  There was a concrete circle, with yoga mats arranged outwards from the centre like spokes on a wheel.  I had only brought my Yogitoes towel (gift of Mary, which goes everywhere with me) but there were mats I could use.  At first I didn't think anyone was going to show up, not even the teacher!  I decided I'd just do my own practice whatever happened, but then the teacher Raja showed up and we got started.  He was a real character!   But there was something so calming about being on that cliff, as the sun was starting to burn away and sink behind the hills.

"No one who comes to yoga goes away empty handed," he said as we set our intentions for the practice.  I thought that was beautiful. 

It was an invigorating practice, a lovely way to dust the cobwebs of jet lag off.  I just kept thinking about my humbler than humble origins in yoga - doing a DVD I'd bought from an Avon catalogue in my lounge room - and now here I was, doing tree pose on a cliff overlooking a beach in India.....We stopped the class halfway through to watch the dolphins frolicking in the waves.  I thought to myself, I'll wake up soon.  It was all very surreal and beautiful.

  

We took some pictures at the end - it was kind of cool to have some pictures of me practising yoga, and I was dismayed to realise I don't quite look like Shiva Rea ;)

"Something to show your mum and dad," smiled Raja.

He was a gentle, generous man, and introduced me to his wife and young daughter afterwards.  It was 400 rupees for the 2 hour one-on-one class, which is about £6.  A bargain to say the least.  I was uncomfortably aware that the amount of money I had on me to last me the rest of my trip would probably be enough to keep him and his family going for some time.  Oh, the western guilt.  It weighed heavily on me.  When you see how happy people are with so little, it does make you question a lot of things.  I certainly came away feeling grateful for what I have.  These feelings were even more acute in Mumbai, where the disparity between the wealthy and the poorest of the poor is even more overwhelming.  In Goa the beauty of the beaches and landscape subdued that for a while. 

I went back to the same beach-front cafe/bar for dinner, and enjoyed  many Kingfisher beers and the same curry I had had for lunch, I couldn't resist.  The staff recognised me from earlier in the day and said "are you sure?  Don't you want the barbecue?", showing me the hot coals they had set up on the shore and the vast array of fresh fish on offer.  I was sorely tempted but all I wanted was that beautiful curry, the fragrant rice, and the soft crispy fresh naan.  And watermelon juice.

I beavered away at my netbook, chatted to some very nice people and then managed to have a Skype call with Tom on the free wifi.  I stayed at Cuba Goa, drinking and writing, until they kicked me out! Man do I know how to live the wild life ;) ha ha.

I stayed up until I hit the 100,000 word mark.  I knew I wasn't going to finish the whole thing before my 30th birthday (now only a fortnight away) but I was pleased to have hit that milestone.  The fans rushed and whirred above my head as I typed and then collapsed into a happy sleep.

Breakfasted the next morning on the beach.  This lovely creature kept me company:

The beach was full of stray dogs that wander around, or sunbathe, or keep people company.  They aren't officious at all, they just wander around looking at what's going on, checking out the action.  Even though I'd had my shots I knew it wasn't a good idea to give her lots of pats, so I just enjoyed the company and gave her a crust of my toast when I'd finished :)

Did a bit of marketing:

I got stared at a lot, which I was told to expect, but what I wasn't prepared for was how many people would come up and ask to have a picture with me!  It was a bit strange but I laughed it off.  Everyone I met was so friendly and kind, and seemed more than happy to assist me or point me in the right direction. 

I checked out some of the local shops where I met a strange lady who sold all manner of things, all of which she claimed were "good luck"!  She had a rather fierce look about her and I was worried I'd be cursed if I didn't buy anything!  I ended up buying some incense off her and as she handed the bag to me in exchange for my 100 rupee note, her eyes narrowed and she said "IS GOOD LUCK!"

I hope so, I thought as I left the shop!  Three weeks later, I burned the incense the night before a 10k race.  I had hurt my foot and wasn't sure if I'd be able to run.  The next morning I woke up and I could run! So yes, maybe it was good luck.

Eventually I went back to my favourite stall where I got a lovely dress and tablecloth, and a Gandhi t shirt for Tom!  The owner, Anita, and I had a lovely chat.  She was the second person who offered to buy my dress off me (no way, it's my favourite!)

Two days in Goa was not enough.  I will go back.  I can still taste the watermelon juice. 

I caught the flight to Mumbai later that day.  I think that was when the real adventure began, where India revealed another layer.

To be continued...........