Goa, Gokarna, Kerala

Rainy weather - Goa

Fishing fleet - still goa

Lead silver waves

Gokarna. This is a hotel!!!

Kerala, 6am

Heading out from the wharves

The "Chinese fishing nets," because they look like old-school chinese hats?

Tartar sauce with that?

Ginger seller

The churches of Goa

This is the tomb of St. Francis Xavier (sorry, thought it was of Assisi)

The Se Cathedral, the largest in India (and apparently, Asia!)

Goa

Just a couple of shots

Hampi - sandbox of the gods...

I'm currently on India's western coast in south Goa. It's raining buckets. Recently, however, I was in Hampi, which was amazing, an utterly surreal landscape of temples and towers and huge rock piles. It was a 16 hour bus ride from Bombay to Hampi. I spent three days there, wandering among the ruins and baking in the sun (now long obscured with the arrival of monsoon rain. And more rain. And... you get the picture.) Anyways, first batch of pictures!

Bombay in the rain

This is the entrance to a Zoroastrian Fire Temple

Hey batter batter...

Coconuts

In front of the obscenely huge Victoria station 

Sheep. At Bandra train station.

Bombay and the Elephanta Caves

Bombay/Mumbai. Spice and gin, trains and rickshaws, yelling touts, sea views and colonial mansions - The ride from Delhi to this massive city took 16 hours. There were eight other people in my compartment, our berths crimson, leather covered mattresses. It was a forgettable trip, blessedly easy compared to the horror stories that travelers in Nepal had shared with me.

After passing fields of agriculture, long vistas of new, still rising towers and apartment blocks, and boggy swaths of land, I arrived in Mumbai’s Central Station. In my taxi through the city I saw a zoo of motorcycles and black and yellow taxis, some modern, some looking like antiquated models from the 1950s, long, squat, honking lumps shooting through traffic.

Red buses barreled past my taxi, and a man was loading gas canisters into the back of a truck that was already packed to the brim with cargo.

And there was the usual assortment of mustachioed faces, of men sitting or squatting by the curb or on motorbikes, enjoying a smoke or a cup of chai.

My taxi-driver scooted next to a delivery truck, its rear door half open. Three men were inside, close almost to touch. “Good morning!” they shouted at me.

The Gateway to India, built for a royal visit in 1911

It was 7pm.

“Good evening,” I shot back, sending my taxi driver into a fit of giggling, and starting a three way conversation – back seat to front seat to the truck, sometimes zooming a few meters away, but never too far from our taxi.

The Taj Hotel - this is the one attacked on 11/26, India's 9/11.

A few moments later, one of the men in the truck hurled a paper-wrapped ball into the taxi, a surreptitiously pulled sweet from the boxes they were delivering. There was a cheer from the three men when my taxi driver and I downed the sticky, fibrous sweet, and then our two vehicles veered apart.

(Then my driver tried to charge me three times the normal price of my ride, sort of a wild welcome to Bombay.)

…………….

I decided to skip the long wanderings through the city yesterday, and headed to Elephanta Island instead, one of the many islands off of Bombay’s coast. The island is home to five hollowed-out caves filled with hulking, intricately-carved statues chiseled into the bones of the island between 450-750AD.

The air on the ride over was like a warm, sweat soaked sock, clammy and heavy. The water looked like muddy lead, and the engines chuffed like angry water buffalo. The ferry passed a flotilla of freighters and haulers, and shipyards tucked into islands around the bay.

Escaping the heat

After 45 sticky minutes, I landed at the pier of Elephanta Island. Two boys hurled themselves off of a wooden boat a few yards from shore. A technicolor toy-sized train hauled tourists down the long pier but I walked instead, passing corn roasters and sweet sellers, trinket vendors and restaurants, then up the long, tarp-covered pathway to the island’s caves.

Tourists and trains

There are seven caves on the island, but the first is the one that really stole the show. Outside, children scampered about, and inside, whistles from the many security guards tweeted angrily through the caverns, forbidding tourists from touching the caves’ massive statues.

There are around 15 statues which rise almost six meters high, different depictions of Shiva, the Hindu god of destruction. (In Nepal one of my guides said eloquently “He is a wrathful god – he never steps on land, only human bodies.”)

The statues loomed above me in the gloomy dark, tantalizing hints of a long forgotten culture. Here Shiva stood as the king of Dance, or of yoga. Another statue was a trinity of three heads, beautifully preserved and untouched by the bullets that the island’s Portuguese occupiers used to shower the statues with back in the 15-1600s.

There were other depictions too, of Shiva’s marriage to his great love, Parvati, and of him killing a demon. But I learned those stories later. During my visit to the caves I just wandered about, staring at the intricate statues, dodging the island’s monkeys, and then finally returning home.

For people still interested in what's happening in Potrero Pucu...

Hey, a quick note - if you are still interested in finding out what's happening in Potrero Pucu, Amy - my super hardworking follow-up who speaks perfect Spanish - just updated her blog. Read it here.

The Red Fort

I spent today wandering through Delhi's Red Fort. This architectural behemoth sits in a northeast section of Old Delhi, next to the Yumuna River. The fort is a preposterously huge complex, 250 acres ringed with two kilometers of 18-33meter high walls. It was built between 1638-48 by Shah Jahan, one of India's Mughal emperors. 

I arrived through the Chandni Chowk, a huge, teeming bazaar of spice sellers and lime-juice vendors, rickshaw drivers, and touts, all of them determined to sell me something. I even saw some guys squatting, dusting off bathroom scales, guarding them zealously with feather dusters. (Pay to weigh yourself? I don't know.)

Today, while not as hot as my first few days here, was a scorcher. I entered the fort at around 11am passing first through the Chatta Chowk, a covered bazaar that held jewelry, textile, and other precious metal shops. Now, it's mostly high end tourist knick-knacks.

Chatta Chowk

I walked next to Diwan-i-Am, the hall of public audiences, and to a massive mall beyond dotted with other pavilions and royal buildings - the Diwan-i-Khas (hall of PRIVATE audiences), and the Pearl Mosque (Aurangzeb's private mosque). I also saw the Khas Mahal - the emperor's private chambers.

Diwan-i-Am

The Pearl Mosque. Apparently it had copper plating on the domes above, though I think it looks beautiful like this.

A grille of the Khas Mahal, look carefully and you can see a beautifully carved scales of justice

A distant view of the Shahi Burj, the emperor's private work studio. Not a bad gig if you can get it...

A ruined mosque in the old Salimgarh fort attached the Red Fort's north east section.

I spent a few hours wandering, but the heat was completely enervating. I got lost trying to find my way to the Salimgarh section of the fort, (an old fort that predated the Red Fort by more about a century), which is still used by the Indian Army. (They turned over the bulk of the Red Fort for tourism purposes back in 2003.)

Finally, I located the path to this quiet spot, which ran across an overpass and a set of train tracks. The Salimgarh section doesn't get visited nearly as much as the rest of the fort, and I got to wander about by myself. There was a ruined mosque (see above) and some out buildings that were locked up. The grass was parched like hay, and I came to some battlements, over which I could see a long ribbon of highway.

All in all, a fun day, a lot to take in. And the heat just killed me. After I made my way back to the Chandni bazaar, I slurped down a Coke and a bottle of water, returned home, and passed out for a few hours until the clouds rolled in and the temperature finally started to drop.

Jantar Mantar

Yesterday I went to a different section of Delhi and wandered around the observatory of Jantar Mantar (originally Yantra-Mantra). It was built in the 1724 by Sawai Jai Singh II.

It was a delight to wander through the complex next to these looming red structures. The park was filled with other (mostly Indian) sightseers. I also had my first experience of Indians asking to take their pictures with me - for no apparent reason. I'd heard about this weird phenomenon from other people who traveled through India, but yesterday was the first time it happened to me. Five times.