Passing through Margao

Still here! Still alive! Have been too busy having fun to write about it - which is precisely how it should be.


VELLORE

From my arrival point of Chennai, I took a train to Vellore, a small city where my friend Lena is doing a medical internship at the hospital. Spent less than 24 hours there, I think, in which I met a bunch of international students, and experienced a most interesting autorickshaw ride: The road from the train station was fully blocked by traffic, so the driver swerved off the road and down into the dry riverbed, where we bumped along for ages on a kind of footpath in the dark under the bridge, and had to step out for a moment at the end, because otherwise the little two-stroke engine wouldn't make it up the embankment on the other side.


GOKARNA

Lena, her boyfriend Daniel and I took a night train from Vellore in the east to Mangalore on the west coast, killed time there (lunch, cafe, walking around in the intense heat, buying a shirt) before continuing on to Gokarna.

Gokarna, on the coast south of Goa, is an interesting place, because it's frequented mainly by two groups of people: Hindu pilgrims coming to pray at the town's holy temples, and Western tourists coming for the beaches. You'd think those two cultures would clash, or at least I would have expected to feel like I was causing an inappropriate disturbance for the pilgrims, but somehow everybody seemed to just work around each other without problems. And in fact Gokarna was very beautiful and very chill and we spent a relaxing two days doing the mini beach vacation thing, before taking a local train up to


GOA

Goa is actually a state, not a city - I didn't know that before a week ago - so we visited a couple different places: Panjim, the capital, still bears a strong colonial Portuguese influence in the food (bread!), religion (very visible Christian population) and even the way some people are clearly Indians but look quite Portuguese. Old Goa, the once mighty Portuguese capital, now consists of a handful of enormous, impressive churches - without really anything else left of the town. Margao is considered mostly just a transportation hub, but I had a nice afternoon here a few days ago, checking out the wonderful covered market and walking around.


HAMPI

Margao is where I parted ways with Lena and Daniel, who were both good company and almost impossibly capable travel guides (with a mass of acquired knowledge of how to travel in India, and more importantly, how to BOOK travel in India) and headed for Hampi, a tiny tourist town amid a sprawling complex of 15th century ruins.

I expected Hampi to be interesting and pretty - instead, it was amazing and beautiful beyond description. My pictures won't do it any justice, but I'll try to upload a few when I get a chance. I spent two fun days running around with a troop of Swedes - other students from Lena and Daniel's dorm who happened to be there at the same time - renting bicycles one day and mopeds the next, exploring ruins and climbing strange, rocky hills.

My last evening in Hampi, I walked for a while along the river and through a banana grove, just soaking in peace and beauty. I came to India expecting chaos and noise and dirty streets and whatever else - instead I got this.


IN TRANSIT

Now I'm back in Margao (third time...), hanging around between the daytime train from Hampi and the night train down the coast to Kochi. Four hours left to go...