An Ancient Oasis

Monday evening Jenneli were back on the night train heading for Hospet, which is next to Hampi, which is the sight of some ancient ruins. We lucked out with the best train compartment we’ve seen yet! We slept well and after getting off the train found a great little hotel for $5 next to a large river and in sight of some of the ruins. Jenneli’s tender tummy had a wonderful helping of porridge as we found the restaurant on the roof to have a wide mix of world food. We took it easy till the mid afternoon at which point Jenneli seemed to have made a full recovery.

In the afternoon we visited the ruins. Jenneli said it best “This is the most photogenic place I’ve ever been”! Yeah! From Jenneli! The girl who takes an average of 150 photos a day on a trip! I’ll have to let the pictures speak for themselves, but I’ve never seen anything that looked quite so much like an ancient oasis.

It’s now the morning of the next day and I’m catching up on the blog before we have an autorickshaw tour at 10am. My stomach made me nervous last night but I believe it was the 2 lemon tonic waters I had earlier. They were very yummy but I think my stomach didn’t like all the acidity and bubbles.

Bangalore attacks!

We arrived into Bangalore in the early morning of Friday the 13th. We ended up staying a bit further away from the city than we planned because the hotels were full on account of a big convention. After settling in we headed off to the main part of Bangalore to see Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix! We both enjoyed the movie and so did the packed audience that cheered whenever the main characters made their appearance. We treated ourselves to Dominos after the show and went off to shop for a bit. Wrapping up the day we found ourselves in a little lounge/bar called “NASA”! I thoroughly enjoyed the décor, with space pictures on the walls, the staff dressed in airline pilot costumes, and all kinds of weird space looking stuff around.








Jenneli enjoyed it too right up until they asked us if we didn’t want to sit in the “family section”. Which is a partly enclosed part of the bar where men AND women can sit. I partially understood how she felt as memories of the dance club in Mumbai came back to mind. We had a drink in the “family section” and left to go rest up for the night at the hotel.








The next day we took a tour of the botanical gardens which were full of honeymoon couples trying to figure out what to do now that they are married. Some seemed incredibly happy some looked more like they had been having better days. The gardens where littered with large amounts of trash as most places in India so we enjoyed the incredible trees and flowers. After the gardens we went to FabIndia, Jenneli’s favorite store in India. She wanted to shop for a while and I decided to head to a small bar for a beer as sitting in FabIndia can’t hold my attention for the 2 hours Jenneli might be in there. At the bar I met a great fellow who grew up near Chennai and had been to America and Europe. We had a great conversation and he asked if he couldn’t take Jenneli and I out to dinner. Had I known at that point what I know now I would have politely refused.






Jenneli explained to me, as we picked her up from FabIndia, that she wasn’t feeling to good and that we also needed to get a mouse for the laptop. The nice fellow suggested that he could take us to a shopping mall and then to the hotel. The mall was great however getting to the hotel turned out to be a problem because of traffic and he asked if we couldn’t stop at a nice bar to wait out the traffic. At this point Jenneli was not feeling well at all but she though she might be able to handle it. The bar turned out to be the same NASA place we were at the previous night. Jenneli made a turn for the worst and I apologized and we bolted for the hotel. The next few hours Jenneli was not in good shape and just as we debated going to a hospital she improved well enough to sleep. It took 2 full days of bed rest but she is now better. We think it was a pretty bad case of of Delhi belly but it could have been food poisoning. Sadly we had to use up the last of our antibiotics we have with us. We have more back at Ongole, so we’ll have to cross our fingers till then.

The Hindu

The Hindu, as is written right under the title, is “India’s national newspaper since 1878”. This is the main English newspaper that I read daily, if possible. Each state also has local paper and I also try to pick these up if I can. At only 10 cents they are good entertainment on the busses and trains. They also contain a sudoku which Jenneli and I race to see who can finish first. (I have yet to beat Jenneli) It’s interesting to see what the paper picks up. Stories range from the immigration bill that failed in the US congress to the demolition of a building built on illegal land. I learned yesterday that a outbreak of hoof ‘n mouth disease was underway at the zoo we visited in Triviandrum and they had to close because animals were dying. Two had died the day we had visited, which explained certain exhibit closures and the security present.

Reading the paper I have also noticed a few trends:

1. Property and real estate is big news. Builders will bribe government officials for land rights that will end up being reclaimed by the rightful owner or the government itself. Homeless will try taking over unclaimed land or even claimed land if they can get away with it. Often the court will have to decide who ultimately owns a piece of property.

2. Corruption. There is always a corruption scandal of some form or another at the local, state and national levels.

3. NRI are important. NRIs are Non Resident Indians. It may be that the English paper just has much more focus on NRIs but the paper will follow any story that impacts NRIs, that includes immigration, visas, terrorism in the UK, even when NRIs are elected to office in foreign countries. When the Nimitz docked the paper reported that the only Indian born sailor was a cook on board.

4. No city is ready for the Monsoons when they happen. The month before the monsoons the papers ran stories about how the problems from last year are still present and that government mismanagement is to blame for not being prepared. The government claims things will be better. The monsoons are pouring down now and the papers are covering how many cities were not prepared, like last year, for the monsoons.

5. Education is important. The papers are full of ads for higher education, courses in IT, engineering, degrees from colleges, the paper runs stories about student entrance exams, educational trends, prices and the like. The local papers will publish the names and photos of the top students in the area and where they are likely to go to college. The paper will also include educational supplements about a particular subject or field. The paper has the normal crossword but may also include math problems, chess problems, sudoku, brain teasers and story problems.