A Tale of Temples and a Jumble of Jungles - Pt 2

Quarry Sunset

Bedrock/Hampi

Bandipur was the furthest south I was going to venture in my trip, doubling back on myself I headed to Hampi, one of the most unique places I’ve ever been. This was down to a combination of the prehistoric boulders, scattered like a packet of dropped Malteesers and the mystical Hindu temples, powerful relics to the ancient kingdom that prospered here at one time. It was an Indiana Jones temple robbing set in the Flintstone’s hometown of Bedrock. 

The bus left me on one side of the river but the hostels were based on the other. With no bridges and the ferry not running for another couple hours there was nothing for it but to settle down and watch the locals go about their daily routine. Even though it was just turned 7am the river was already bustling with people. Women congregated in groups of four or five to wash their clothes. Boys would then be handed the long saris and with one deft flick they would expertly unfurl the couple metres of silk to dry in the sunshine over already hot rocks. Younger kids ran backwards and forwards splashing each other and shrieking in delight. Men meandered through brushing their teeth and staring at the group of backpackers waiting to make the crossing with as much interest as we gazed back at them. We were sat on steps worn smooth by time, running the length of the riverbank almost as if they were designed for the very purpose of providing a good view to an attentive audience of the river below. A group of chattering kids came running up, exploding with delight to tell us that the elephant was coming for his morning bath. Sure enough over their heads and elephant and his rider were making a ponderous and careful descent down the stone steps, before joining the kids in the river who splashed all the harder.

 

That cool down was needed as by lunch the temperature had risen to a more than mild 43oC, confining most of the day to the hammock. At around 5pm that evening I headed out to the quarry lake, 3km from Hampi. It wasn’t a tough hike but there was enough heat left in the day to make it a sweaty one. Along the way though we came across what could be best described as a semi abandoned warzone. The residents in Hampi (like a lot of the poorer people across India) had never secured proper buildings permits before they had built their houses. This was common practice and after twenty to thirty years of living there they may have assumed themselves to be safe enough. But starting in 2012 the government had started to demolish houses, hostels and restaurants in an attempt to clear out the people and preserve Hampi as a historic site. The latest round of demolition had happened a few weeks before we got there. With no place to go many families had simply remained in the ruins of their houses. All that was left was the haunting image of kids sitting amongst the rubble.

Paddle Turtle Boats bottom left

In an attempt to stop the notoriously poor swimming locals from swimming at the lake, “Beware of Crocodiles,” signs had been daubed over the rocks. Knowing this was merely a myth was some consolation, even still any movement in the water was met with a sharp turn of the head just to be sure. Paranoia levels only started to recede when out of that soapy blue water and up on the rocks to watch the sun sat in a majestic array of ruby reds, golden oranges and hallucinogenic greeny yellows.

 

Up early to beat the heat the next day I spent the morning flitting from temple to temple, with a few royal buildings thrown in for good measure. I must have visited at least fifteen different temples with many more that I had missed out on. The first two beside the riverbank were home to a troop of monkeys who snatched everything from dropped bananas to a beggar’s change bowl. 

Vimanas

Most temples followed a similar style; made up of a vimana or pyramid looking roof towering overhead with every nook and cranny stuffed with a religious idol, grey stonewalls that reached up twenty foot high in places encircled a flagstone courtyard and intricately carved pillars held up the roofs that were then lined with their own statues and carvings. If it wasn’t a benevolent god looking peaceful, it was a fictitious beast snarling down, every inch of stone was worked masterfully to assault the eyes with detail. 

Musical Pillars

Some even had musical stone pillars that chimed when rapped. Others held underground water wells and secret doors. It was hard to imagine there could be any deity in the entire Hindu pantheon that didn’t have a shrine or altar dedicated to them there. As well as the temples there were also the royal stables (though being India they housed elephants not horses), bathhouses for queens, palaces for the men, bazars and guard towers. The work of the craftsmen was faultless and on a mammoth scale.

Afterwards I ignored the rickshaws and cut back to the water crossing along a path that winded over the huge slabs of rock and past a few lesser temples and shrines. This was an adventure all in itself as I negotiated the Jurassic Park landscape. That evening it was up to the monkey temple, 580 steps hewn into the rock face, to watch a sunset lost in the clouds but still offering incredible panoramic views over the valley below. Looking down at the temples I had visited earlier in the day I couldn’t help but think how amazing this scene must have been half a millennia ago when the area was at its peak.

Whats happening in hampi

After Hampi was my first of two 24 hour journeys in the space of two days. This took me through Pune, changing buses at 4.30am, and on to Aurangabad, which would serve as a transit hub for the Ellora and Ajanta Caves. Buddhist, Hindu and Jain worshippers had hewn these from the rock face and they contained altars, shrines and temples, some of which were two or three stories high. Others had ribbed ceilings to echo sound and many supported by huge pillars more akin to something out of a Tolkien novel. The earliest of the caves at Ajanta dated back over two thousand years and were still in pristine condition. The most impressive was the freestanding Kailasa Temple at Ellora, which would have been about the size of a regular church. The masons had chiselled it top down from the mountainside, so in theory it was one massive block of stone and then they carved out the inside to form the temple. Astounding work even before you take into account the fact that it was created with only a hammer and a chisel. From Aurangabad it was another 24 hours then through Ahmedabad in Gujarat onto the hot deserts of Rajasthan

Ajanta Caves

Whilst waiting for my food on my last day in Hampi, a scene unfolded that perfectly encapsulated India for me in one go. Farmers were burning the fields in a very un-eco friendly way of getting ready for next years crops. Whoever was supposed to be watching it hadn’t been doing the most diligent of jobs and the fire spread until a coconut tree erupted in flame. Panicked locals run for a hose whilst others form a bucket chain. The tree is too high and the pressure in the hose too low so that they can’t reach the fronds on top, which are burning like a candle. Even more panicked they start to move all the scooters and motorbikes away in case any falling flaming debris would set them off. The most panicked of all however is the owner of the music store right beside the burning tree, frantic over his thatched palm roof and an inventory of instrumental kindling.

With the spectators standing about watching and a reluctance of motorists to dare pass the fire, a roadblock forms in the street. A farmer with a hay truck is stuck there until a cow comes up behind him truck and starts eating his hay straight from the trailer. Desperate to get away he starts to blast his horn and tries to edge through the crowd, obviously reluctant to watch the cow eat all of his work.  The cow however runs after him, and another cow in the fire field chases after the first cow, neither of which have noticed the fire. They both run right into the middle of it and their frightened moos now drown out the car horn. The cow on the road runs off but the other one is trapped in the corner of the field by the fire and the barbwire fence. Milling about and shouting in fear, barbeque beef is on the menu until it shoulders through the fence, splintering a sign and scatters the crowd of assembled watchers. Meanwhile a man has shimmied his way up an adjacent tree like a monkey, grasping the hose and clinging on he puts the fire out from above. By the time I got back to the restaurant my dhosa and paneer butter masala were out on the table (and probably the best bit of the whole ordeal).

A Tale of Temples and a Jumble of Jungles - Pt 1

Mysore Spice Market

Leaving Bangalore after the wedding I was probably not in the soundest of minds to attempt my first non-AC carriage train ride. For a start there are no designated seats, after you purchase your ticket it is every man, woman and child for themselves. And believe me they know it. There were two stairways down to the platform but one of which had collapsed about five feet from the bottom. Not keen on making the jump down onto a bed of jagged rubble with all my bags, I decided to cue to use the other stairway like a civilised person. Unfortunately civilisation seems to have skipped India in certain places. Instead of people lining up to go down, a writhing, wriggling ball had formed at the top of the stairs. Men pushed kids and all out of their way, feeble protests drowned out by the shouting they were doing into the mobile phone glued to their ear. Women indiscriminately swung the big burlap sacks balanced on their heads like wrecking balls to clear a path in front of them. I almost felt sorry for the kids being pinballed about and trampled underfoot until one of them accidentally/on purpose kicked me in the shins trying to get past. As the momentum surged backward and forward I was lifted me off my feet on more than one occasion by the flood of people on the stairs. And of course all hell broke lose when the unstoppable force of people going down met the immovable objects of people trying to get back up.

Street Cricket

The compartments of the train were laid out with two benches of four facing each other and two luggage racks running parallel overhead. An aisle ran between those benches and the two further single seats that faced each other. It could have fitted fourteen comfortably, maybe eighteen at a stretch but certainly not the thirty people who piled in on top of me. I was pushed closer and closer to the window until I had to open it just so that half my body could lean out. Kids were standing between my legs, guys climbed onto the luggage rack to sleep on top of my bags and about six people squeezed onto the edge of my seat in a perverse game of tetras. That was before the water sellers and other vendors pushed in, adding to the discordance of noise with their own bellows of prices. But once you got used to the clammy claustrophobic press of bodies it was actually quite an interesting experience. The views were spectacular as we cut through part jungle part pastureland and there was no shortage of wildlife to look at. The kids played games to pass the time and even though I had no idea what they were saying their squeals of joy were infectious. Once the train started moving, wind streamed in through the window grills to cool the cabin down until it was quite pleasant. And at 75p for a four-hour ride it was easy to put any discomforts aside.

Magnificent Mysore

My next stop was Mysore, a city famous for its palace, its handicraft and its dhosa. Keen to see all three I went to the Palace first. It was a huge royal complex and is rated as one of the finest in India. The old wooden structure of the palace had burned down during a feast but the new stone building built in its place at the turn of the 20^th Century was lavishly restored with no expense spared. I took an audio tour of the place, which offered a trove of information to match the treasures on display. Unlike some of the other tours I have done it didn’t getting bogged down in complex genealogy trees that would require a pen and paper to even begin to follow. Packed with an amazing assortment of antiques from pre-Colonial and Colonial times, there was something to see in each room. The highlight was definitely the Durbar Hall used to hold court. True to the divisive customs at the time, every caste and gender had their own position in the room. The Raj’s throne was centre, with his closest nobles and advisors placed beside him according to rank, a gallery for guests and invited dignitaries and a balcony for the royal women. Through the pillars that supported the roof the front was completely open to the parade ground where common people stood to observe proceedings. In the vast grounds of the palace there were a number of temples and other buildings previously used by the royalty and it took the best part of the morning to see it all.

The Durbar Hall

On the way out, a local struck up a conversation with me and decided he was going to take me on an impromptu tour of “the part of Mysore that isn’t in your travel guide.” First we went to a market used pretty exclusively by locals and packed with bowls of spices, bags of vegetables and ghastly hooks hanging sheep and chicken. The stench from the slaughter yard was pretty overpowering but I could help but stare with grim intrigue as the butchers expertly hacked them down sizeable into chunks for customers.

After that we were on to slightly more pleasant odours when he took me to the incense and oil shop. Here I watched a woman rolling sticks through a mixture of charcoal, sawdust, water and oils. These were left to dry in the sun for a couple of hours before being coated in their fragrance powders. She would roll 7,000 of them a day by hand, sitting in that room, making rolling cutlery back home in the Wellie look like a gift.  The oils were all natural remedies that would do everything from clearing asthma, to ridding of rashes, to improving your sexual performance. They were adamant that their water lily oil would stave off mosquitos for up to ten hours and was a lot better for your skin than Western DEET based repellents. But after a night of getting terrorized by mosquitos I think my tasty Irish blood must have ben just too tantalising.

Tabletops 

The last workshop I visited was definitely the most amazing, with Mysore’s carpenters renowned throughout India. They showed me the whole process starting with a plain tabletop and cutting out the designs using a stencil. They do not use any paint throughout the entire process but instead build the inlays through different types of wood. The different wood types provided the full palette of colours they needed for their designs. These were painstakingly carved and sealed into the tabletop. Next the whole table is sanded down and varnished. Then legs are intricately carved and fitted following a similar method. Overall it can take the team of ten men up to a year to make one of the larger banquet tables and would cost in the region of ten to twelve thousand euros. They have quite a long waiting list so get your orders in now!

Dhosa

The dhosa in Mysore is famous in southern India for its authenticity, with some of the restaurants dating back a couple centuries. Slathered in ghee (Indian lard) it had the greasy feel of a good takeaway. The restaurant had five tables of four but each seat was filled. As soon as someone stood to leave another took his place. The waiter came out with an endless stream of the savoury crepe like pancakes and dished them out to whoever had an empty plate. Dhosa after dhosa, until I too could take no more and was replaced at the table by the next guy.

ConAirBus

The evenings in Mysore were mostly spent chilling on the hostel rooftop with the owners looking out over the city. The Zostel guys gave me a great tip for my next destination, Bandipur National Park, as well. Rather than pay £25 for a 4x4 to take me on a two-hour tour they told me to stay overnight with a local at a converted hunting lodge for £7.50 a night. The owner had built his own watchtower and from there you had as good a chance as any to see the wildlife up close. On the way there two police officers flagged down our bus and got on with a third man. The two police officers sat down while the third man remained sheepishly standing. My exact thoughts were could he be? No surely he wasn’t a prisoner, who in their right mind would bring an arrested person on to a public bus. But before I could begin to admonish myself for being so silly, one of the police officers reached over and opened the other man’s previously concealed handcuffs and then the man himself cuffed them to the rail overhead. Certainly one way to balance the books on the policing bill back home!

Unwanted Hitchhiker

The bus I had taken was actually the main bus ride between Mysore and Ooty, two big towns in the south of India. The incredible part was for forty-five minute of the journey it runs through the national park. So people on their ever day work commute will drive past a plethora of peacocks, a deluge of deer and manic monkeys stealing food from anywhere they could get it.  At the checkpoint between Karnataka and Tamil land, an unfortunate truck driver was unaware that a monkey who had climbed on top was pilfering his cargo of onions. Eating his fill and throwing the odd piece down to the waiting troop when he needed a breather. The buses were quite old fashioned, rickety, metallic contraptions. People were packed into them like the proverbial tin of sardines only I think that tin would have had a better suspension system.

The first day at the lodge I saw pretty much everything from the watchtower that overlooked a small manmade waterhole; wild boars bathing, more monkeys cavorting, stags charging and clashing heads. A peacock spread its feathers in a majestic display of defiance to ward of an approaching mongoose. It looked so regal and brave, but then ruined the moment when it flew (did not know they could do that) to a tree branch. The long wedding dress of plumage it carried behind it was so ungainly that it looked unbalanced in the air. This time more drunkenly majestic, like your friend at the end of the night falling over but managing to keep his kebab intact.

Watchtower view with boar and deer

At night as I watched a biblical thunderstorm play out in the towering mountains nearby the hostel owner joined me. He was an elderly man and had been working there since he was a boy and when it was still a hunting lodge favoured by British hunting parties, a very different set up to the eco-tourist business he ran now. I had really wanted to see a wild elephant or tusker as he called them, as so far I had only seen work elephants in India, always chained up whether it was for tourism or heavy labour. The next morning the owner delivered and one of the workers jumped me on to his bike. We sped off into the jungle in search of an elephant that had been spotted there earlier. I had heard before that Indian elephants where very aggressive when compared to their African cousins. They were known to have trampled tourist vehicles and now long trenches had been dug between the road and the bush to offer some protection, but the driver told me if the elephant wanted you bad enough it would still get you. We searched for twenty five minutes before he pulled the bike in and killed the engine. Walkeing back a hundred yards up the road he pointed through some branches. And there it was across the safety ditch but no more than fifty yards away. A big bull elephant busily stuffing a half shredded plant into its mouth, the powerful shoulders were haunched as if it was ready to spring off at a moments notice. Its head was down while it chewed but as soon as I took out my camera it paused eating. Whether it could see me or not or merely decided I was no immediate threat it went back to the task at hand. We sat for half an hour or so watching him eat his fill before he moved off deeper into the bush and I was still exhilarated after as we rode back to the lodge.

Wild Elephant v Work Elephant

The only downside were the local tourists at the lodge. Most of them didn’t appear to have any interest in seeing any wildlife, instead most of them seemed to want to be seen seeing wildlife. They spent most of their time in the watchtower taking selfies, answering phone calls or playing music off their phone. They talked loud enough they could have been heard back in Mysore and certainly loud enough to scare away any animals. With me the gora or foreigner, I was sadly more exotic to them than any tiger or leopard ever would be. While I was sitting there they would try to ask me every question from favourite colour to what my star sign was. Part and parcel of coming to India for sure and each day I'm definitely now waving at more random people than the Pope and Queen combined, but when out to see wildlife it does start to grate. Realising I wouldn’t see any more with them there I organised for a 4x4 to take me back to the bus stop. If I expected any difference here I was sorely mistaken as we ricocheted our way from pothole to speed bump. These drivers are employed to work in the national park but instead they drive like they are rallying on the Isle of Man. He used his horn in place of his brake for every blind corner, meaning we were more likely to hit a wild animal than see one on the way back!

Gulmohur/Peacock Flower Tree

Give me BanglaMore

Wedding Bells and looking swellz

Having came for Indian summer I had thought Goa would have been as far south as I’d dare to venture. My good friend Nabeel though had other plans and managed to get me an invite to an Indian wedding. I had heard weddings here could last up to a week long and with Nabeel about things always tend to get messy. So I decided to arrive a few days earlier to explore the city while I was still feeling fresh.

Stormont 

The first thing that struck me was the sheer size of the city. In the tour guide only one small section of the city centre was covered in the map but that still took me over two hours to walk. That meant picking a hostel was all about location. 

Cubbon Park in the city centre

Thankfully I lucked out when I choose mine, Electric Cats, as it was only a twenty-minute walk from the newly running metro. Only one line of the metro is opened running laterally through the city. It has taken 5 years and $2.1bn (3 times the budget) to build, slow even by India’s standards of red tape and bribe based construction hold ups, but when all the lines are up and running it will make travelling in the city a lot easier. Autorickshaws will hardly break the bank at £2.50 for a 1 hour journey but the exact same route by metro took me 20mins and cost me 14p. The idea of a metro is still quite alien to a lot of Bangalore’s inhabitants. Kids bursting with excitement at the ticket booth, cheated death rushing through the slide doors before they guillotined back shut. The blank stares the older generation returned to the many aides and helpers reminded me of the same look with my mum when I showed her how to use on-demand for the first time. But getting off at MG Road station I felt like I could have been back in Shanghai’s East Nanjing station or any western city with the number of big label shops and boutiques. Advertising boards everywhere, each adorned with the whitest Indian guy you could find just to make sure the product sells.

Tipu's Summer Palace

Iskcon Temple

Over the first few days I visited my fair share of temples. In the south of the city was the Bull Temple, a towering black bull statue reared up on a platform in the centre. He seemed too colossal to be housed inside, giving the impression that with one snorting toss of his head he could tear the whole building down around you like a Minotaur of Ancient Greece. After that was the Hare Krisna Iskcon Temple in the north. It had a strict dress code so lungis were needed to cover bare knees and all shoes and socks deposited at the door. The whole complex was laid out in a winding loop with the metal handrails reminiscent of cueing for an amusement park ride. First we went through two small temples, serving as a prelude of what was to come. Ornately carved wooden doors and a collision of colour adorning the statues on the altar. Ponytailed disciples lit incense and planked in worship at the front. The doors of the main temple were at least 20ft high and again each panel had its own intricate etching. Inside my eye was immediately drawn to the main altar comprised of three open doors, a mess of stories played out by statues and incense all gilded in gold. True to form the railing wound round the front of it so everyone could see up close and make their offerings. In the centre of the room there was a band sitting on plump embroidered cushions playing sitars and traditional pipes. Others chanted along with them the same praises to Krishna, who looked down on approvingly from detailed fresco paintings on the ceiling. I was to see a lot more of Krishna after that though as we wound our way through four separate souvenir stores. This gave me plenty of time to stock up on everything from pencils and postcards to DVDs chronicling his adventures and all emblazoned with that blue spectral face.

Blinds and Basket Weavers in the street

It says a lot about Bangalore that after seeing all that there wasn’t really much touristy left to see. 

Toit's Microbrewery

Again, like Shanghai, it seemed a city I’d rather live in than want to visit as a tourist. And like Shanghai when there’s nothing else on, day drinking is always an option. So it was I found myself with a crowd, including the hostel owner, at around noon sampling the beers at Toits, a microbrewery. These have sprung up everywhere in Bangalore and are not so slowly spreading to other cities. After our first few pints we were even offered a free tour of the facilities and saw exactly how they made each type of beer starting with the malt and right through to the finished article, putting the rather tame Guiness factory tour to shame in comparison.

Jackfruit Vendor

One of the big highlights were the games in the hostel at night and learning backgammon in particular. It was always a game I had seen but never played, like Spyro because of Xbox. Playing with a fiery Egyptian who was a big fan of learning by doing he schooled me in the first few before I was able to come back and hold my own. Another first for me was trying jackfruit, I had never even seen  it before and so it was like hearing they had brought out a new flavor of skittles. About the size of a melon but with a skin more similar to a bulbous grapefruit, the vendors have to hack it down to the wee nubs of fruit that look like a deflated light bulb. With a knife they pry out the stone and you are left with a rubbery chewing fruit that tastes a bit like a fruit salad bar. Tasty but you have to be able to get over the nauseating image of the swarms of black flies covering them before you buy them.

The monsoon has seemed to have pulled a fast one on all meteorologists, showing it’s not only Ireland, and the first few showers have came early. At first these thunderous downpours were sorely needed, dropping the temperature from the high 30s and releasing fresh smells from the parched ground and plants. That was at first. After an hour roads were starting to swell and footpaths were transformed into shifting swamps. Garbage blocked drains unsurprisingly failed to deal with a week’s worth of rain coming in a couple of hours. Getting home became its own adventure powering through shin deep mud brown water and dodging cars that were amphibiously splashing past you, all desperate to get back. That night I had to navigate my way across town to check in at my hotel for the wedding. Indian practice dictates that the family of the bride pays for everything as after, she will then live with the groom’s family. This included my hotel bill, a friend of a friend of the bride, crazy but I wasn’t complaining. The first night we went for the pre pre wedding Mehandi ceremony in her family home. Here artists use natural dyes to draw intricate patterns on their forearms. The longer these dye-tattoos stay on the bride, the longer the marriage will last. All of the bride’s family were getting tattoos too so as a sign of solidarity I allowed them to do my hand as well. However I didn’t realize that the Mehandi is usually only for the females in the party so rather than draw an intricate feminine hand tattoo, the artist went for the sort of scorpion he’d draw for a 12 year old at a family party.

The Bride's Mehandi, her mum getting her's and my whopping scorpion

The next day was the ceremonial puja in the morning before the more festive Sangeet in the evening. It was like the set of an Indiana Jones party; an old ruined temple, illuminated by strings of fairy lights and colour lamps hanging everywhere. Entertainment was provided by the bride and her friends in the form of traditional choreographed dances. Even the kids were getting in on the act with a few modern takes. Pride of place in the centre of the marquee, was a sofa for the bride’s mother and father to sit back and bask in the affection lavished on them.

Sangeet

Offie/Bar complete with rum carton, bleak

Being a Brahmin wedding though meant there was no drink and strictly vegetarian. The first of these was easily negated and the last of which wasn’t even an issue. 

The younger generation congregated in the car park and drank out of bottles they had snuck in with them. This was mostly Old Monk’s rum, coming in a Ribena like carton, it only cost marginally more at 80p, and was actually quite tasty. Going in with my pre-poured bottle I was a little nervous, like sneaking drink past your parents. The bride though asked me if I was drinking coke or coke (whilst simultaneously waggling her head from side to side). The Indian head waggle signifies a lot of things, it means hello, it means yes and basically the equivalent to a wink. Happily I passed over my coke and she downed a good quart before passing it to the groom to do likewise. After that the bride and groom were always first to be visited after a trip to the car park so they could get their own share without being seen to go out. After that was the food and my oh my was it good. A train of servers first laid your leaf, cleaned it, sprinkled salt, sprinkled chutney pickle, the rice, the veg, the salad, the sauce, the sweet, until you had a little bit of everything and were ready to tuck in. There was no cutlery so guests were expected to eat with their hand, I was in heaven. Picking up fingerfulls of rice with a scooped hand you then use your thumb to push it into your mouth. Mixing in the sauce and the veg as you like and each handful is different but so good. The only mistake I made was trusting Nabeel to make my pallet cleanser at the end. This is called Paan and is made of a beetle leaf wrapped around chilies and chuna, lime stone. Nab being Nab decided to put way too much of the chuna paste in and afterwards I was struggling to remember my name let alone taste anything.

Two meals on banana leaves and the dreaded chuna paste white top right

Two Rajs

The only cure I decided was to keep drinking to wash the corrosive taste out of mouth. It might not have been the best idea as the six of us who followed that course of action all slept in the next morning and missed the main part of the ceremony. We were there for breakfast though which was another feast like the one before. I soon gathered a crowd of excited kids who were very interested in the foreigner in their midst. They decided that they must teach me a bit of Kannada, Tamil and Hindi, and were hysterical at the poor attempts I made to repeat them. For lunch and dinner they then coached me how to eat properly and made sure that I ordered all the best bits. Afterwards it was on to my spin bowling in cricket, standing on opposite ends of the reception area and pinging tennis balls at each other regardless of who was walking by. Kids playing cricket in general in India has been such a real experience to watch. It has a very jumpers for goalposts vibe about it with kids using broken chairs, bottles and even stacks of stones to serve as stumps. They will play it anywhere too; on the beach, in back allies, half deserted car parks and everywhere else in between. After another night of car park drinking it was back to the hotel to sleep it off. Nab showed me a proper hungover Indian breakfast of Chicken 65 (spiced chicken with chilli and veg), chicken lollipops (fried chicken drumsticks) and aloo (Indian flat bread stuffed with paneer and potato). Perfect send off before we go our separate ways for a few weeks. Now it’s on to Mysore before pingballing around the Jungle for a few days.