Train to Cochin

This will be fine.
The tickets say C1 aircon. No's 68/69/70/71 how hard can it be?
The train was 40 minutes late. A train pulled in to the station, not ours. Have you ever seen the cattle trucks that shipped pigs and cows across Europe ? This was a human cattle truck. Heads , arms , hot faces peering through the open bars, so many bitter chocolate bodies melting together, flashes of white teeth , gold bracelets and colourful saris breaking through the black interior of the train. Authentic "Indian take away "men rushed up and down the platform , stainless steel trays balanced on their heads piled high with silver foil take away containers, there was a great waving of arms reaching through the window bars grappling for attention.
The sing song cry of the food sellers rang out " byirianibyrianibyriani chaaaapati" " byirianibyrianibyriani chaaaapati" .
This trade is good business . When the train pulled out most of the stainless steel trays were empty . I sang out the song when the seller past me "byirianibyrianibyriani chaaaapati" , he loved it. Mad white lady tourist.
But this is India, it makes your heart laugh and then within a split second that same heart drops to your boots.
Having succumbed to the lateness of the train , the heat and the very unsavoury smell "L'eau d'India" ( this is not curry and spices) I went to sit on one of the marble stone benches.

Toy train

The train itself was exactly as we had seen in the documentary. Green and yellow on the outside pale powder blue inside, old and well loved , worn out dented ceilings, brown plastic covered seats. Pale blue shaky wooden window frames and very dodgy doors.
The slow 30 mile an hour journey was every thing we had dreamed of , washing away the images of over built up "Ooty on the hill ". The train track cut through the mountain side , dropping rather too profoundly on one side. Here the little villages were exactly as they should have been, dotted around the hills , triangular images of vividly coloured patchwork surrounded by semi circular orange terraces of fertile soil hoed into small neat rectangles of earth waiting for planting , some already covered with fluffy sharp green carrot tops.
We were sharing our carriage space with a young Indian couple celebrating their second wedding anniversary, they were from New Deli and worked in Bangalore in IT. The train made a few stops on the way down. At one stop we got lucky and we were joined by a station master. He was just great. Really dark faced, laughing twinkling eyes and curly hair. He sat opposite Franco. Now any of you who have travelled with Franco will know that he becomes blood brothers with the indigenous people with in minutes. He and the station master hit it off in no time and our journey was made. This man had worked on the railways for 24 years as a station master, a highly respected job. He has three daughters all of whom he must supply with dowries when they marry. Franco offered him his sincere sympathy on that expense which caused great hilarity . The young woman from New Deli said the dowry must include gold,lots of heavy gold.

Times past

The drive here took 5 hours, one of which was was spent going nowhere,driving round and round in the forest, lost, then going back to the place you first thought of. Hmm.no sat nav here baby!
Ooty is in the Nilgiri Hills, it was a Hill station 7000 odd feet above sea level, a spot favoured by the British in early 19th century to escape the heat of the cities. Ooty and it's charismatic Toy Train journey was a dream we all wanted to realise on this trip to India. It was a subject of a documentary in the Uk a couple of years ago and we decided if we ever came back to India we had to do this journey.
We drove up the climbing winding road rising through a forest of giant eucalyptus trees, as tall as the sky and dead straight, the trunks covered with peeling strips of pink and sage coloured bark , it was surreal.
As we neared Ooty, at the top of the hill the landscape looked like Devon. Sweeping green plains bordered with tall pine trees ,a stream in the centre of the plain and long legged horses grazing in the sunshine. Idillic.
Ah ha! ..... but this is India, nothing is ever as it appears to be. We turned a corner and came across a basin of hillsides covered with what at first appeared to be multi coloured cement construction slum shacks: window - front door -window. Little boxes of vividly coloured two room buildings, propped up one on top of each other like pyramids of soup tins in the supermarket. These pyramids are on every hill side , not at all charismatic but choc a block , some of the modern blocks look how I imagine eastern European blocks to be but in miniature. There are areas so crowded that from a distance it could compare to the elite overcrowded hills of Monte Carlo. Trust me, the similarity stops there. The boom in Indian tourism has caused this area to be un controllably exploited by the developers for holiday homes . Sound familiar?
" All the world is a village" , as they say in Italian.

Dry and not a drop to drink

We crossed from Karnatika into Northern Kerela . As soon as we crossed the border it was noticeable cleaner, the trail of plastic and rubbish beside the road almost disappeared.
We were in Kerela 4 years ago, wow! what a dramatic change. Kerela is " Gods own country" according to the native people. It is fresh green, rich in agricultural farming, banana, coffee and spice plantations . It has obviously prospered hugely from the Indian boom. Large "Surrey style" brand spanking new houses painted in fuchsia , banana leaf green, bright orange and other almost toxic colours , sit up and back from the side of the roads looking like Del Boy cocktails. Large verandas with shinny chrome balustrades , Tata 4x4 s in the drives. We have since learned that the money that is funding this property explosion is made in Dubai and bought back to India by migrant workers.
It became apparent from the black head scarves and the black full lenght dresses of the women walking along the roads that we were driving through a Muslim area. The one and only significance of this is in todays title.

Banasua Hill Resort.
We arrived at our very beautiful mud constructed resort, checked in and took in the surroundings. Dinner time. It was Peters birthday, let's order some wine. Ho Ho Ho! "Solly Sir absolutely no wine Sir, no alcohol it is here Sir." after some nod nod , wink, wink, they managed to produce two beers.
.
The beds at Banasura were full on Indian style. That means hard solid wood bases with thin mattresses. There was little sleep , tempers short. We requested softer mattresses " yes madam, most certainly " the result was two more mattresses were added on top but these were at least 6 inches narrower than the bed itself. Result? the bed was reminiscent of The Princess and The Pea with the added 8 inch drop on my side to the lowest mattress . " totally absolutely , fantastic" Yaar.
We set off on our trip to the Edeneky caves some 2 and 1/2 hours away. We needed an ATM . Sounds simple enough , 3 hours later we were in a town Sultan Battery, it was busy, densely hot and dusty the pavements were an assault course that make English health and safety laughable. Just why can't we have some danger in our lives back home? Dodging drain gullies and yawning gaps in pavements just adds so much twang to the daily grind.
The first ATM was out of order. We understood that there was another one further down the road.

Off we go.

Safari

The drive from Mysore to Kabini through the Karnataka state was beautiful. The countryside which apart from the endless streams of plastic rubbish that run like streams continuously along both sides of the road , is a wonderful rich burnt sienna and burnt umber, the earth is so fertile. Bullocks plod along tilling the fields belonging to an age gone by that doesn't sit at all along side the images of Bangalore and its suburbs. The country side is vast , the workers are thin and burnt like the land but they love it when you wave and in return the give those flashing white smiles ( Chin LRL ) . the men wear little more than rags , the women their brightly covered saris , the women do such tough work, it is not uncommon to see them with huge lumps of rock on their heads or huge bundles of wood twice their own body size. They walk continuously from one destination and back again. There is a visual feeling of closeness among the women workers, the working groups are seldom if ever of mixed sexes.

Lost track of days

Mysore was a series of mixed experiences. The site seeing , temples, palaces and a fort. I would love to be able to wax lyrical over these visits but whilst the history and traditions are naturally educating there is always a disappointment that the artefacts have been so poorly maintained . The elements are very cruel here and damp and dust are not good preservatives.

At the temple we got "slum dogged" . Remember the Jamal in slum dog millionaire , he worked outside the Taj Mahal and took money from the tourist to watch their shoes and then sold the Nike trainers. Well our shoes didn't get sold but we more or less bought them back . It was the most expensive outing since we have been here.
As we entered the temple a tall young Indian man swooped us up , gave us instructions , told us where we could take photos and ushered us into the zones tourist are permitted to enter. We went like lambs to the slaughter, we took the lotus flower, we took the bright yellow flowers for the offerings. We had red dots, white dots and yellow dots put on our foreheads. None of the Indians had three dots so we reckoned that it was like having a stamp on your forehead saying " I've been had"
As we left the main temple our cunning guide said " follow me , yes please yes" so we did . We we walked barefoot on boiling hot Tarmac - away from the shoe depot. We hopped from one foot to another , he gently coerced us to into a second temple about 100 yards from the first one. Here we were out of sight of any security . At this point he was so caring , he noticed we were burning up and said with such authority" I send for shoes yes yes, right now. " ( chin, left -right-left) enter shoes man, "200 rupees please" (about £2.30. ) at this point we new we were doomed. 200 RUPEES! " Yes very so madam each thank you kindly" How stupid can you be , then came the bill for the whole lot, lotus flowers , little bright orange thread bracelet s . Yes , we ended up handing over around 6000 rupees for some thing that should have been free. At which point Guide man said "Working for totally free service, all money going to orphanage"........ yeah right. Then , puff ! and he was gone.

Traffic part I

Time softens memories. Last time we were in India in 2009 we were terrified  by the car journeys we made. All trips whether 100 kilometres or 250 k all seemed to take 4 hours and we would get out of the car totally wrecked. Somehow we seemed to have blurred all that out and remembered the colours, the scents, the amount of laughing we did and the wonderful people.

Yesterday we had to make the journey  from Bangalore to Mysore a trip of 4 hours, 2 of which were in the dark. I was like Pi , I prayed to every God, Profit, Buddha , Mother Teresa whoever I could think of.
I swear I clenched my buttocks so hard so many times I pulled my hamstrings. Is that possible? I don't know but that's what it felt like.

The traffic is a constant river of vehicles surging forward, playing a game of dare with each other. I have no idea what the annual number of road deaths are  in india but it must be high. They  have introduced something new since were last here, Sleeping Policeman. The traffic department have invested heavily in this idea. They are every two hundred yards in town and every few miles on the main Bangalore Mysore highway. Like every thing in India they are extreme.  There come in two designs. The pointed bastards and the five in a row shallow, narrow and  deadly. Occasionally they put cats eyes along them to warn of their arrival but mostly they don't . Hence a lot of last minute braking or bumping so hard that your back ends up ruined.
There appear to be a few basic rules to driving here.

Day two and three Cricket on the beach

Some Indian boy were playing cricket on the beach. The bat was broken in two . They handle was used for the stump and the remaining bit for the bat.we stood and watched but they stopped playing to come and talk to us, they love to ask you questions about where you are from. Franco tried to explain that his son had played cricket for Italy.
"Italy town or Italy country?" we'll , yes exactly, there was no answer to that.
They new Alex Stuart.
They asked if we were here for "Joyfulness"
"Joyfulness?" of course" holiday" , yes we are.

Last night we ate at a restaurant called Gunpowder . It was the best Indian food I have ever eaten. Kerelan. The winner was "sweet and sour pumpkin" just delicious. I have never known how to eat pumpkin, whether it is a savoury or a dessert. This was cooked with tamarind and toasted mustard seeds and fresh curry leaves. The entire meal 4 starters 4 mains and 4 deserts cost £26 with £6 for the wine which we took along ourselves. So far the food has been wonderful.