Iddly, dosa and black sludge

Stilll in Madras. Its very hot today. I tried to walk to the museum but gave up. I think crossing over the incredibly stinky river finished me off. So, what do people eat for breakfast here? There seems to be two favourites. One is the dosa, basically a big pancake, folded over with something spicy inside, served with a small bowl of curry sauce and one of curd. Usually I've got a masala dosa which has spicy mashed potato inside. The other main one is the iddly, which is basically a big soft savoury cake thing served in a curry sauce. Sometimes they throw in a donut shaped piece of bread too. Sometimes there is a rice and curry combo available. Lunchtime is the main eating time, a lot of cafes (and most seem to be just vegetarian, every eating establishment is proclaimed as being veg or non-veg) serve "meal" between about 11am and 2pm, which involves a banana leaf, a big pile of rice, some types of curry and a samba (sauce) poured on to the rice. It is eaten by mixing with the fingers and then shoved into the gob. I've not found any eating place that could be called relaxing, most a big utilitarian cafe type scenarios where the service is fast, the bill comes before you've finished eating and you're out the door before you know it. This is all in the south of India, I'll soon be finding out what the north is like as I'm heading up to Delhi tonight. Anyhow, I can sort of see now why Goa is so appealing, as things definitely were a lot more relaxed there.

Black stream of sludge which passes for a river in Chennai

Fruit juice and chipmunks

Just had an amazing lassi, there are loads of fruit juice cafes here. In Madras(Chennai) at the moment. Its dirty, busy, it stinks and there's people all over the place, sleeping on the street, washing their kids in the gutter and so on. For some reason I kind of like it though, its the most full-on Indian place I've been to yet. Only yesterday I met a man who was walking a chipmunk on a string leash. Street scene in Chennai: Honk honk!

Tomorrow I'm going up to Delhi (3hr flight - trains are booked up solid for the next month), then taking a train up to Pathankot to get to Dharamsala, the new home of the exiled Tibetan people. I wouldn't have minded the 40-hour train journey, but it seems I was highly naive in my "lets wing it and just rock up to the station to buy tickets on the day". I should have learned my lesson from China. The other travellers I've met here seem to be following quite a highly planned itinery, booking all their train tickets and accomodation several weeks in advance. What a bore to do all that though, you might as well be in work.

From the beach to some big red rocks

Namaste. Just a mini blog as the internet is unpredictable here (powercuts and the like). I arrived in Goa airport last wednesday about 5am, and took a taxi to Benaulim, which seemed like a quiet, reltaively undeveloped place from my guidebook and not too far from the airport. It was ok for a few days, but I'm not much of a beach person at the best of times, and there was not much to do apart from wander down the beach, back up again and then sit in the few bars that were open at night time. Hardly any tourists there, so most of the town was looking pretty bored. I have this impression that Goa is just a big beach resort. Nice and relaxed but thats about it. Had curries and Chinese food mostly, cheap (about 80-100 rupees for a curry and rice and a nan, so about 2 pounds). Anyway, I was half deciding whether to just go back home, but I thought I might as well travel around India a bit.

Fishing boat, Benaulim beach, Goa

So today I'm in Hampi, which was an 8 hour train ride from Goa's Margao station. From the train I could see forests, open grassland, a few small settlements, and miles and miles of agricultural areas (paddy fields, bananas, coconuts). Not a very heavily populated part of the country. Hampi is a very small town, basically catering for tourists who come to see the ruins of what used to be a great Hindu city here. There's some nice little walks up on top of hills with various ruins scattered around and lots of monkeys. Not done much today, I walked along the river here watching the Hindu people bathing in the water and carrying out various religious ceremonies. Been chatting to a Kiwi bloke most of the day, we're going to meet up later and find the one bar in this town that supposedly serves alcohol...

Cows mooching by temple ruins, Hampi

Next place I'm going is Mysore, further down south. It is of interest to me as the main ashtanga yoga training centre is there; Unfortunately I don't have a reservation (you need to book a month in advance and it was way out of my budget), so I'm just going to do the usual thing of wandering around aimlessly taking random photos.