Bangalore – From Pyrenees to Pennines

Indian Friday: Bangalore to The Rainforest Retreat

I rather enjoyed re-visiting India via my blog last week. So I went and dug out the diary I faithfully kept. The events it describes have never yet seen the light of day. For the first ten days I was with the group of people my ex-brother-in-law had put together, to explore aspects of rural Indian life, focussing on small producers working in traditional and organic ways. We had no internet access during that period.

I’ve decided to share my diary with you. This may take a few Fridays. Bear with me. I suppose I’m pleased that I kept such a detailed record of a piece of personal history, and of a country I’d never visited. I wonder how dated this account would seem to the current traveller?

Bangalore to The Rainforest Retreat

Saturday 10th November 2007

Here I am, sitting outside our bungalow at The Rainforest Retreat. It’s 6.40 p.m., pitch dark: and about half an hour ago, the chorus began. I just lay down outside and listened. All those forest sounds – I don’t know what they are, but it’s like some complex symphony. Suddenly, one group of creatures will become silent, and others will chip in with their own song. Many multiple groups of course, who suddenly go diminuendo, only to be succeeded by a group of quite different creatures, or an individual bird, or whatever …

It’s been quite a day. For my part, I hiked all the way to Simon’s hotel, and it WAS a hike, where we shared breakfast. His hotel was so not-me. Lots of flamboyantly dressed flunkeys and a big help-yourself buffet, but no nice people making piles of idli, just for me.

Then into the mini-bus. Bangalore seemed to go on for ages, and even when I had definitively stopped, roadside settlements and shops went on and on. Village shops are a mystery to me. Even very small settlements have coffee shops, ‘bakery’ shops and a whole raft of others too. The landscape became more rural though. Palms; sugar cane; more and more working bullocks, yoked often; goats; sheep; cows …

Lunch outside Mysore, rather early – a large vegetable thali and a glorious salt lassi.

After lunch, the climb began and the roads deteriorated, and Indian driving came into its own – overtake on a bend? Why not? Honk and honk till the car in front gives way? Certainly. It won’t give way actually, so you will pass it on the other side instead. Oddly, we came to think of this as fairly safe. For all their bluster, the drivers are careful.

Pepper plantations, coffee plantations, rice in the early stages of growth. And still the villages came, some with very large markets which only prolonged hiking got us through. Tropical rainforest scenery … and finally we arrived.

Here we are in the middle of the forest. Our bungalows – I have one with C and M – are set amongst it all, as are their crops: small crops of beans etc. and others such as vanilla set among the forest trees. I went for a wander by myself, listening to the exotic forest sounds. Communal supper outside – all meals are taken in a shelter outside our bungalow. And so to bed. By the way, I forgot, Unpacking, I moved my rucksack, and a noisy clockwork toy sprang out. Only it wasn’t. It was an angry and upset hawkmoth, and it chattered angrily all the time we were evicting it.

My next days’s account is of exploring the estate and surrounding neighbourhood, so I’ll let my photos do the talking.

Just two extracts from my diary for that day …

We enjoyed munching fresh cardamoms, the ‘cherry’ round the coffee beans (sweet and refreshing – civet cats like them too), clove leaves, as well as looking at pepper(spice kind) plants, vanilla, pineapple plants, and all the organic produce they’re responsible for.

Sights on our afternoon walk: a massive millipede; a land crab; an aeriel ant’s nest; a palm whose juice in the morning is given to young children. By noon it’s like beer, and by evening it’ll do your head in it’s so potent.

Here is a link to the Rainforest Retreat. It’s clearly under different ownership now, and much more developed than in the early days when we visited. Though from this year they no longer cater for short term visitors. But it retains its interest in sustainability, biodiversity and organic practices.

How Life Changed … a Few Years Ago

I retired in 2007. Almost immediately, two life-changing events took place. First we moved lock, stock and barrel to southern France, and then only a couple of months after that, I went to India – by myself- apart from just over a week at the beginning when I was eased in by travelling in a small group tour of the more rural parts of Karnataka and Kerala. I even bought my first decent-ish camera for the trip.

Both those events meant I wanted to keep in touch with family and friends back in England, and frequent letters or emails to each one of them wasn’t feasible. The answer? A blog. I barely knew what a blog was, and was fairly technically inept. So I chose a platform that looked as if it might meet my needs: Travel Blog. And that’s where I stayed for our early days in France and my Great Indian Adventure. I’ve just looked at it now, for perhaps the first time in ten years, and discovered French posts I’d quite forgotten about. Eventually I moved, first to Blogger, which I didn’t like, and then to WordPress. For all I moan about its technical glitches, it’s here I’ve formed real bonds with bloggers all over the world (you know who you are!), and made more casual links with dozens more. Blogging has proved to be the positive face of screen-time for me, and the only bit of Social Media I engage with.

But hey! This is supposed to be a Lens-Artists Challenge post, delivered this week by Anne – photos obligatory. So here is part of my first blog post from India, typed on an ancient computer with not-always-effective keys in an internet cafe (remember those?) on 9th November 2007. I didn’t manage to post photos that day. So now I’ll include within my post the ones that should have formed part of it. I was even more of a newbie with a camera in those days.

The 36 Hour Day: 9th November 2007 …

…with no photos attached. Bangalore may be IT Central if you’re in the know, and I’m not. These are not good Internet centres I’m finding!

Still, life is very good. I arrived at 4.30 yesterday morning, just as you lot in the UK were tucking yourselves up. And that’s how I lost a night’s sleep. Way too excited to sleep all day. Bangalore for me vacillates between being stimulating beyond belief, and, er, overstimulating.

I loved arriving early. The dawn was breaking, and dawn chorus Bangalore style was a series of exultant yelps and squawks from various unidentified birds of the large variety. My hotel, luckily, is in a quiet corner, and I can tell you there aren’t many of those here. From early till late, all you can hear is the irritated honking of horns as auto-rickshaws, motorbikes, laden bicycles, flash cars, very unflash buses, occasional random cows, all jostle for the same space (today, in an auto rickshaw, I counted 6 vehicles, ours was one of them, lined up across the lanes designed for 2. I’ve learned to jay walk with the best of them. There is no alternative. Really, there isn’t. Despite the warning posters saying how many people have died in the last year on the roads, and the slightly lower number of fatalities. Eh?

I’m converted to Indian breakfasts. Up on the roof terrace of my hotel, I enjoyed their crispy rice pancakes which, because they’re cooked in a curved pan, puddle into a soft light sponge in the centre. 2 spicy dipping sauces, one based on coconut, the other lentils, and the undivided attention of 3 members of staff…this by the way is only a mid-range hotel, nothing fancy at all.

Eagles fly above Bangalore as I enjoy my breakfast.

Other early impressions: dozens of women beautifully dressed in saris, in the early morning, crouching in the already busy roads, sweeping and sweeping with handle-less brooms.

Cows tethered to lamp posts on busy junctions, eating the weeds round the lamp posts.

Security guards at virtually every building. Not I’m sure because of a crime wave, but because labour is cheap.

Only time to tell you about part of yesterday. When I finally set off with the intention of exploring for the morning, I hadn’t gone too far when I was picked up by an auto rickshaw driver. Well, he could see ‘Arrived from England this morning’ tattooed across my forehead, I’m sure. He offered to show me round for Rs. 10. I didn’t believe it then, and nor did it happen, but I WAS exhausted and it wasn’t an unattractive proposition. It was such fun! He proved an amiable guide, whose English, while obviously hugely better than my Kannada, often led to mutual incomprehension.

My first friend in Bangalore: the rickshaw driver who took me on a tour of the city

Still, he hared round a variety of sites (‘This is my Parliament building. This is my national bird. This is my Rajah’s Palace’, which I found quite endearing). He waited while I ‘did’ Bengalaru Palace, one of the homes of the Rajah Wodeyar. As the Lonely Planet says, you are personally shown round by an aged retainer who is rather keener to show you fly-blown pictures of the royal family than the quirky furniture and fittings. Seedy but fun. And it’s not often you see cows grazing in royal gardens. My new friend gave me his number and urged me to ring him whenever I wanted a rickshaw. I greatly enjoyed this ramshackle mode of transport. He’s had his rick 15 years, and I see no reason why he won’t have it 15 more.

Let’s see if I can include a photo or two next time. You may have to wait for ‘My Holiday Snaps’ when I come back.

Street scenes from my first day.

‘How wonderful yellow is. It stands for the sun’

At the moment, we all need the glow, the zing that a good splash of yellow can provide. Luckily, Jude has provided the perfect opportunity for us to hunt down all our yellow-rich images, in her challenge Life in Colour. Let’s have an injection of gutsy, vibrant lemon, amber and gold alongside our long awaited Covid vaccines.

I’d thought of showing those springtime flowers we all love – aconites, daffodils, primrose, tulips and kingcups. But maybe I’ll save those for another day. Here’s a complete hotch-potch of yellows to cheer up a day which, here at least is thoroughly and dismally grey.

The sign that greets me whenever I leave the house

To view any image full size. just click on it. The quotation of the post title is by Vincent Van Gogh. No wonder he liked sunflowers. And the header photo shows one word from another quotation. Wander round the St. Paul’s area of London and you’ll eventually uncover the whole sentence, from Virginia Woolf’s novel, Jacob’s Room: ‘What are you going to meet if you turn this corner?‘ What indeed? In this area of London, enough to fill an entire guide book.

Indian Journeys: The Auto-rickshaw

I arrived at Bangalore airport at about 6.00 in the morning. There were several hours of baggage handling, airport confusion and a taxi-ride through town, with auto-rickshaw drivers weaving and buzzing round us like angry wasps, before I reached my small family run hotel in a quiet residential quarter of town.

The garden at Terrace Gardens Guest House, Bangalore.

I stepped out of the car to the calls of loud birds yelling and whooping, and shortly after, found myself escorted to a roof terrace, where I gazed at distant huge birds with enormous wingspans (eagles? vultures?) coasting lazily on the thermals. Attentive staff served me with unending supplies of small soft spongy pancakes – idli – with thin aromatic and spicy dipping sauces and much-needed coffee. It was 9.00, but my body knew that back in England it was 3.30 a.m.

Unable to rest, I set off to explore the quiet back streets near the hotel. Dozens of women were out in the back streets, crouching over their handle-less brooms, sweeping and re-sweeping the pavements. Stallholders on street corners sold bananas, brown and well past their sell-by dates, or coconut juice straight from the shell. A few bored monkeys sat about on air-conditioning extractor pipes. At a building site, a bullock stood patiently while two men shovelled rubble into the cart it drew.

Delivery from the Builder’s Yard. This picture was actually taken in Pondicherry a couple of weeks later. But it’s a scene I often saw.

Then I reached the main hub of Bangalore, MG Road (Mahatma Gandhi Road) with the pavements, such as there were, thronged with pedestrians. In the road itself, cars, vans, trucks, auto-rickshaws, all constantly blaring their horns raced along, over-taking, under-taking. However would I find the courage to cross? Answer. By finding a group of others also wanting to get to the other side and introducing myself into their midst. There’s safety in numbers.

I hadn’t wandered too far when I was picked up by an auto-rickshaw driver. He could probably see ‘Arrived from Europe this morning’ tattooed across my forehead. He offered to show me round for 10 rupees. I wasn’t green enough to believe that, but I was exhausted, and it wasn’t an unattractive proposition. It was memorable – and fun.

He proved an amiable guide whose English, while obviously hugely better than my Kannada, often led to mutual incomprehension. Still, he hared round a variety of sites introducing me to the city he loved. ‘This is my Parliament building. This is my national bird. This is my Rajah’s Palace.’ And he waited while I ‘did’ Bengalaru Palace, one of the homes of the Raja Wodeyar. As the Lonely Planet says, you are personally shown round by an aged retainer, who is rather keener to show you fly-blown pictures of the Royal Family than the quirky furniture and fittings. Seedy but fun. It’s not often you see cattle grazing in royal gardens.

In front of Bangalore’s Parlaiament building. My friendly driver took this shot.

He was in the pay of various shops. Of course he was. And he took me to some. I was quite clear that I was not going to buy anything. Not on my first day. This proved to be an effective bargaining tool to bring prices tumbling to the level the shopkeeper planned to sell at in the first place. Reader, I bought a couple of things, and nor did I regret it.

My new friend urged me to ring him whenever I needed transport in his fifteen year old rickshaw. I didn’t. But later that day I wished I had. A different driver saw me puzzling over my map, and offered to help. But his help turned out to mean trying to persuade me into shop after shop to buy. When he realised I really wasn’t going to buy anything, he dumped me.

I was in a poor part of town (where? where?) and with a 500 rupee note as my lowest form of currency. When the average meal costs seven, I knew that offering this note in shops simply wasn’t an option. I trailed round back streets busy with rickshaw drivers repairing their trucks, vendors splicing huge melons and squash to sell, garland makers fashioning powerfully scented jasmine garlands for Diwali, sheep drinking at doorways, solitary cows chewing at a pile of rubbish, tent villages…. until I finally found a travel agent, where they changed down my note.

A mosque near the market in Bangalore

Street buffalo .

And then I took a third rickshaw, asking for an address near ‘home’. He took me directly there. Food, an internet cafe, and home to bed, long after dark. Night falls in a matter of minutes, at 6 o’clock. My exhausted body knew quite well that the day was over.

MG Road, Bangalore, during Diwali

Nightfall in MG Road

This is my contribution to today’s Ragtag Challenge: Taxi

Indian Journeys

I began this blog almost ten years ago (What? Really?). But it wasn’t my first. I’d started blogging two years before that, on a different platform, to record my memories of a very special holiday in India. It wasn’t the best of platforms and in fact it no longer exists. Eventually I took a deep breath and moved to WordPress, so you can’t flick back and read about my Indian adventures here.

These days, I’m in a writing group. Last week, we fell to talking about travelling, and about how we often overlook the pleasure of the journey in favour of impatiently anticipating our arrival at our destination. It sent my memory scurrying back to India, and I can feel a series of posts coming on about Journeys in India.

Are you sitting comfortably? Then I’ll begin. Now that dates me……

I’d wanted to go to India for more years than I could remember. As a London child and then as a student in Manchester, Indian culture had always been at the periphery of my life: its foods, its smells, its clothing.

When we lived in Sheffield during my thirties there had been ‘The Arts of India’ at the Mappin Art Gallery, when craftsman from all over India came, and every day for about three weeks, made pots, wove, carved, and worked with inks and cloth in the art gallery. By night, since my then husband was the gallery curator, we’d eat together, joined by Indian heritage Sheffield residents who became our friends too. They would cook for us and we for them, and we’d talk into the night.

Some years later my son, by then eighteen and just finished with school, worked as a teacher in a village school in Uttar Pradesh, then travelled for some months following his nose all round India. His letters – no emails then – tantalised me.

Family and work all pushed the dream of distant travel away. Until my 60th birthday and my retirement, when my daughter and her husband gave me a very special gift to be spent on travel. India. That was it. I’d go there – with no Malcolm, no friend, no companion found on Thelma and Louise – though I considered all of these options. This trip was for me.

And I went, choosing south India instead of the more visited north. I have memories of markets, of quiet temples, in one of which I was blessed by an elephant, of cows and goats in busy city streets, of eagles soaring over rooftops, of eating at workmen’s cafes from banana leaf ‘plates’, of the Imam’s call to prayer every morning at 5.30 and every evening at 5.30. I had a week in a small group too, in rural locations, discovering the parts of India that work the land.

A temple elephant raises her trunk before lowering it to bless me.

Garland sellers at Bangalore market

Eagles fly above Bangalore

A back street in Bangalore

Cow on a mission in Bangalore

Entrance to a Hindu temple in Bangalore

Washing an elephant in the River Kaveri.

Sunset in the Western Ghats.

Zebra crossing in Mysore.

Street decorations, Thanjavur.

Above all though I remember journeys. It was on these journeys that I often felt closest to being an ordinary citizen doing ordinary things in an extraordinary country.

My first rickshaw ride, on my very first day in India, which turned into an extempore, personal tour of Bangalore from my driver, who loved his city.
The overnight train ride, travelling across India in the company of tea boys, soldier-smart railway officials, giggling girls, serious lecturers, a family groups sharing their carefully prepared three course meal before washing up, then arriving very early in the morning to a busy station community.
Or the intercity bus journey along a motorway, where goats carelessly wandered onto the carriageway from the central reservation where they grazed..
Or my final journey on a local train which I truly didn’t expect to survive so tightly were we all packed. But that, like all the others, is a story in itself.

Click on any image to see it full size.

Snapshot Sunday: Do you prefer your street names in French … or Tamil?

Almost ten years ago now, I had my Indian Adventure, when I travelled first of all with a small group of like-minded English travellers, and then solo round southern India. That’s when I started blogging, using TravelBlog, though I later transcribed it onto WordPress which may be more user-friendly.

The culture shock of arriving in Bangalore with its constant traffic noise, its motor horns, its street-cattle, its monkeys, its people, its eagles and vultures wheeling overhead is unforgettable.

A back street in Bangalore, and a few rickshaws.

Arriving in Pondicherry some three weeks later was just as much of a jolt. Suddenly I was transported (after a motorway journey which included goats grazing on the central reservation) to colonial era France. Here were policemen in kepis, elegant public buildings, corner shops selling baguettes and croissants.

Dept of Public Works, Pondicherry

My guesthouse was a charming 19th century throwback which would have been totally at home on the French Riviera.

My verandah at le Rêve Bleu.

Yet I was undoubtedly in India. There was a spot of building work going on outside my bedroom window. Here’s the delivery wagon:

A delivery from the builder’s Yard

Here’s a more up-to-date delivery lorry:

They don’t usually need reminding to ‘Sound Horn’

Here’s the school run:

School run, Indian style

And here’s the beach:

The beach at Pondicherry.

Here though is the photo which answers this week’s WordPress photo challenge: ‘Names’. A street sign which represents the many-faceted cultural references of what I thought of as my favourite Indian city.

Cathedral Street, Pondicherry — Cathedral Road, Pondicherry

In a couple of days I plan to re-blog an old post of mine which has something further to contribute to the ‘Names’ theme.