• India 07/08
• Spain 09
• Central America 11
• South East Asia 13/14
• Myanmar 17

Mumbai

Jens and Joern left for Pakistan. Since I had no and didn’t want to afford (the time and money to get) a visa, I instead went to Nepal. The last city we visited together was Mumbai (Bombay) – my last bastion of fear – the city I heard worst things about in western media. I imagined the biggest city in India (13 million) as some kind of urban hell which could as well come from the imaginations of cyberpunk author. A hopelessly bloated city in an ongoing and permanent traffic collapse. More than half of the population lives in slums. Even our travel guide talked about certain horrors travelers may encounter and appealed to not judge the city too fast.
So, after a rather exhausting overnight-bus-trip from Bijapur we were dropped off supposedly somewhere near the central. It was before dawn, we were tired from the bus trip, no clue were we exactly were or where we could check in: All hotels we called from the bus were completely full – a normal situation for not totally overpriced accommodations. Well, we managed to get a local bus to Colaba and found a place to stay pretty fast considering that we got lost once or twice.
As I said, I was prepared for the worst, something more fucked up than Old Delhi – that’s why I was pretty shocked and surprised, that central Mumbai turned out to be the most cosmopolitan and westernized, one of the most wealthy and cleanest cities I have seen in India. Compared to Mumbai, Delhi is much worse. Mumbai actually reminds me of London: Even rickshaws have been banned from central Mumbai and are replaced by those cute Ambassador taxis (with meters!). And, Mumbai has proper bars and clubs, thus a nightlife worth mentioning (which is special in India).
Overall, there is not too much to see in central Mumbai, it’s just a very relaxing place and surprisingly un-Indian (western) place to be. After Bijapur and Badami, it felt like a vacation.

Upon arrival – the filth

Street scene on the way to Victoria Station

Part of the harbor

The bazaar was full of crap.

…even literately

Victoria station (CST) – my connection to Delhi: “Take a taxi to CST, get into suburban transport on track 1 to Bandra, from there, take a taxi to Bandra terminal and then find out where the train to Delhi is leaving. If you get moving 2 hours before departure, you should get there in time.” :O

About forgotten temples

I wrote in the article About Rollercoasters that Hindu temples (that are still frequented) feel more like a fair than like an ancient, mythical temple. Well, this is not entirely true… India has such ancient structures of past ages which are not just “forgotten” in the sense of “badly maintained till it crumbled into a ruin”.
The place where we have been is called Hampi… just have a look at the photos…

Was this a public Bath?

Some hall in a temple ruin. The carvings on each and every column were telling different stories. Stories which I partly even knew! (Man, I am so good…!)

We stayed near the bazaar which is at the high temple in the far distance – we had to cross the river from there.

The nutshell is the only way to cross the river… sometimes with three motorbikes on board! The work on 100m long concrete bridge that was about to be finished was stopped just like that 7 years ago. (Jens: ‘Ja hm… lass uns mal nicht weiterbauen…’)

View from the Hanuman temple

That’s me. Still on the Hanuman temple.

It’s India, after all… but wait… look closely to find out how green point garbage is recycled! :D

A gangway in a temple. Very spooky since there was almost no light and it smelled very strange in there. While walking there, we saw a centipede which was about 30cm long and as thick as a thumb… luckily it was dead though.

Goa

We decided pretty quick that we all want to go to Goa and the South first. After about two days and countless chais¹ in the train, we even arrived there at last. I don’t want to bore you with too many descriptions about Goa – it’s just fantastic. A tropical paradise. And compared to rest-India much cleaner and the locals here are just more relaxed. Goa is very much isolated from rest of India, by swamps and mountains, by culture and by rigorous immigrant policies. And the roads are good and – almost more important – the landscape is astonishing. It gives you so much freedom to drive through this landscape, through these little towns and past forgotten Portuguese mansions, over bridges going over mighty rivers and swamps… But if you don’t know India, it looks like Goa has seen it’s best days and everything is crumbling into ruins now. But this is normal for India(n maintenance) and just adds to this unique atmosphere of “undeveloped paradise”. (And to be fair, not only the Indians are to blame for the bad condition of their buildings but the monsoon, too).
However, on the way to Old Goa we were sacked by the traffic police for driving without license and without helmet and after bargaining, we still had to pay a lot of bakshish. But at least we got an “official” receipt. Joern said, he will enframe it and hang it on his wall as soon as we are home ;)
The beaches are all cool too, of course. After all, this is the main reason to come here. But everything except the South² is full of beer-bellied package tourists. We spent most of the time in Benaulim (mostly old package tourists but a nice village flair), Palolem (backpacker and hippie stronghold) and Agonda (less crowded and more calm, will be like Palolem in a few years I figure).

¹ Jens: “During the peak times on the train from Delhi to Goa, hordes of tea-sellers were running around in our compartments; perhaps as many as a German commuter sees in half his office life. On one morning, I even saw a traffic jam of tea-sellers. They were blocking each others way when they came from opposite directions. Cause they shout what they sell all the time, we could hear them from distance already.”

² Goa is not a town but a state.

Jens and me in the 40+ hours sleeper train

…where we played “crown-cap-GO”, a variant of Noodle-GO ;)

Agonda beach. The most quiet of the well-explored beaches in the South.

Joern conquers a rock. Jens and Joern were climbin a lot there.

On the road…: actually we drove around more often.

Harbour for fishing boats – near Benaulim

Sundown in Old Goa

Third person culture shock

When I travelled only on the weekends, I had pauses from travelling where I could review and write down what happened. Now, these two weeks of travelling India are so busy and so much is happening that I have barely the time to write it all down.

Anyway, after the courses in Rishikesh I went to Delhi to welcome Jens and Joern to India. We didn’t make any plans where to go so after some days in Delhi, we visited my place (traineehouse) in Chandigarh first to unload some stuff. We wanted to travel light, only with a small backpack. As for me, I don’t even have a towel with me ;) It’s interesting to see how they see Delhi and India as I feel that I begin to think that everything is very normal here. My brain starts to ignore certain things on the street to let me concentrate on the things that matter – I remember when I first came to Delhi I was so overwhelmed that I even didn’t really notice what the shops in Paharganj were selling. I guess my culture shock was bigger than I thought. Jens and Joern did already travel in other countries in South Asia so I guess it was not so much of a big deal for them. Joern said that Old Delhi looks like the typical third world chaos only more extreme. Also, they were surprised of how dirty, smelly and full of garbage India is and how unnerving and aggressive (not physical) people on the street are. In summary, how “derbe abgefuckt” (“grossly fucked up”) it is here. But very amusing.
Actually, we made so many jokes about Indians, their maintainance policies and customs (“lets just sit down and shit in the middle of the street”) that Joern joked that we have to watch out to not return to Germany as a Nazis ;D

Where is Waldo? Find Jens and Joern!

Rush hour

Extreme overload :D

Chaotic streets

Courses in Rishikesh

I went to Rishikesh because I have been curious about this spirituality thing and as some friends acknowledged, this is the right place. Partly because of the atmosphere there and because there is looks like a normal thing to do to occupy yourself with this kind of stuff; partly because in India or on any other vacation in general you are just out of your normal “busy” life.
Since I had nearly two weeks time, I didn’t want to rush to find something so I took my time to explore Rishikesh and around – (drove and) hiked into the mountains to paradisaic waterfalls and other places. For example the Beatles Ashram which is closed nowadays because of disputes with the government. It is located a bit outside Rishikesh, directly at the Ganges in midst some caves of some Sadhus.

Anyway, by chance, I met Thiago, a Brazilian guy who did yoga for 2 years but at the same time retained his scientific view of the world of a natural scientist. When we met, he just finished reading works of Schopenhauer. And really, even if you unleash European calculated logic on this spirituality-blah, you can’t prove that it doesn’t exist (or that is does exist) because there is very much left for your belief and particularly your perception. We talked a lot. Everyday we used to go the beach or go hiking and discuss these things. It is difficult to sum up our solutions… Basically, everyone creates his own reality since our perception is the only thing we got in order to experience it. There is no absolute reality because there is no one that can perceive it and define it. Only a shared reality amongst people (which is an overlapping reality).
It’s great to speak with someone about this who is very well able to think and argue logically, who has similar doubts and at the same time is open to new ideas or views how to see reality.

However, a few days after I arrived I managed to stuff my day full of activity:
By chance, I found an opportunity to attend a basic Ayurvedic massage course. By chance because the teacher and I talked for a while and as it turned out, he needed a website. Since I just finished a webdesign internship, we made a deal. I think things like that – where no money is involved – can only be a win-win situation. I visited his house everyday to work on the website while sitting on his terrace. This was not only a really nice working and learning atmosphere but gave me a nice insight into an Indian household. They even had a spastic German shepherd dog – he reminded me of the ministry of funny walks very much :D
Later, Thiago and I found a Yoga course which I can only recommend. We did not only do Asanas but we had a lot of lectures too which gave me more than enough background-information to satisfy my curiosity.
Regrettably, I could only stay for the first three days. Then I had to leave to Delhi to fetch Jens and Joern from the airport.

Past - Present - Future

I decided not to go to China for now but come back home – with British Airways (BA0972) at 20:05 on the 28th of March. This gives me still about one and a half months to say “goodbye” or rather “see you later” to India. Before Jens and Joern arrive from Germany, I still got two weeks to travel alone.
It is a bit hard to travel alone again but after a few days, you realize that you are never really aloe. You meet people all the time.
I spent the two free weeks in Rishikesh, curious about spirituality and what else attracts Western tourists to this place. Yes, it is a very touristic place and it must have lost much of it’s original athmosphere ever since it has become famous. But there is still some kind of magic in this little town and nearly every street has it’s own character. The town is very much influenced by New Age culture: It’s fluffy, it’s interesting, it’s funny!

For example there is that guy on the northern end of Laxman Jhula who tried to sell magic healing magnets all the time which he advertised for on a big sign in front of his house.
In Ram Jhula right next to stalls where one can buy delicious cookies and Golgappa, there are even three Indians praising their self-made “past – present – future” machines. These look like plastic Indian-style cuckoo clocks with built-in headphones. (Except one which is a pink toy robot :)) Furthermore, they glued some mysterious analogue displays to the front. (Aren’t computers all about blinken lights and mad indicators after all?)
Well, at least they go with the time. In the age of computerized barber shops, it seems logic that a computer tells you the future.
The fact that these people don’t starve to death must mean that there are really people who either believe this shit or give them money out of a mix of curiousity and pity. In fact, I consulted the future computer too – out of that exact reason. ;)

I’ll really miss this Indian childlike attitude of seeing and doing things. Even though I make fun of it all the time and am sarcastic about that stuff, it’s just so cute that one has to love it. Just the thought of it will always create a smile on my face. India is so improvised, so colorful and mixed-up, you can see contradictions all the time: One time I joined a religious ceremony in Haridwar (a holy city). The sun was going down. Torches and candles were lighted in the ancient and colorful temples at the bank of the holy river Ganges. Some began to chant some Mantras (holy chants) while Hindus cleaned themselves in the Ganges and candles in little boats were set into the water. The buildings reflected in yellow light on the surface of the Ganges. The athmosphere was not solemn or quiet but in a way you could feel the holyness and serenity of the place. Before the ceremony began however, some people sold plastic blankets to sit on which were actually the overage of packaging material. So I ended up to sit on Maggi instant noodles and the Sikh person in front of me on some German chocolate crossaints for kids while a “professional volunteer” preached like an infuriated missionary or a mob-leader to get some donations for the local temples.
On another occasion I watched a sadhu (holy person) who lived in a cave near the Beatles-Ashram in Rishikesh. He was just cleaning his orange robe when… his mobile started to ring.

Packing up home - the second!

It’s time to pack up my stuff again. My internship ended last Friday. Of course, it’s not over yet. Now is the time to truly travel India for one and a half months. Then, I must decide within the next days, if I want to do a second internship in China or come back home after this.

I spent the last weeks in the trainee house remembering all the moments we had in the trainee house and on the (mostly travel-)weekends. Even though the house was some kind of shithole, I am surprised that I got so attached to that house to honestly call it a home. What I will remember is not so much the rooms, the furniture, I will remember the people and the events, even the different eras in our house. The spirit in our house changed so often during my stay, just depending on which kind of people were there, that you can almost say, time goes faster here. But this is not true, it’s even the other way round: Life goes faster here.
Just as fast as the ice in the new deep freezer grew so big that it would block it’s cover and eventually became a giant block of ice, we welcomed and said (or partied) goodbye for so many people that after 4 months here I feel like an old senior, thinking about “the old times”… when we used to party more often, when India still felt so alien and unexplored and when I was (stomach-)ill all the time. ;)
As all Indian things seem to be, the house feels much older than it actually is. One time, I discovered a artifact from past times in the house which was a trainee-goodbye-book in which all trainees wrote something about their stay. It was from ’06/‘07… not even half a year old. Things will be forgotten much faster in this house since the generations here are so short.
It’s as if the house is full of ghosts. There are probably more than hundred people who left their impression and remember the house, but never saw each other. It’s true, the house is imprinted with so many impressions that it really is much older than it is. The memory and life of a house is counted by memories of people who were there and the impressions they left. Not the years since construction. An empty house is dead.¹

Anyway. We had a big goodbye party in our house for even four people leaving in the same week: Saltuk, Jakub, David and me. Even some AIESECers, my boss and some other guys I didn’t know came! I don’t remember so much of the party but I remember that I had a discussion with a huge Australian guy from Opera India about the pain to maintain code of other people and three dimensional user interfaces when Sarthak (my boss) moaned about that we shouldn’t talk about geeky stuff at a party but party!!! ;)

My boss(es) gave me a classical Indian suit as a goodbye present. Wow, it’s so perfect – I think it’s the best present I could have imagined! :D
But – of course – punctually when I wanted to start my 1 1/2 months travel, my camera died. Fuck. This is the worst moment to happen for this. So, no photos. :(

P.S: On my last game of GO in the trainee house, I finally got beaten at Team GO for the first time since I introduced it to the trainee house. It was a close run, though. :D (Germany & Canada vs. US & China)

¹ That’s why friends and family that died will never be dead. They will live in our memories and the impressions they made on us, influences future generations.

About rollercoasters

When you hear about Hindu temples I guess you have certain images in mind. Fine and exotic artworks, unique architecture and the mystic, solemn atmosphere of thousand years. Perhaps you even think Indiana Jones and forgotten temples in the jungle. I don’t want to destroy all your illusions about exotic India. Those places definitely exist, including forgotten temples.¹
However, my experiences are, that Hindu temples that are still used as places of pilgrimage don’t have this air at all. They feel more like an attraction on a fair and the pilgrims look like families on a weekend trip (and they not only look like that, they are).

I went to the Kalika Mata temple in Chittorgarh (near Udaipur) with Esther. Before reaching the temple, you go past hundreds of stalls where one can buy popcorn, coconuts and other sweets to offer to the gods. Occasionally you go past stalls that sell souvenirs like those Hindu posters. You hear children scream and shout, TVs showing religious movies which you can buy there, radios bawling with Hindi devotional music. Near the temple, the path to it looks exactly like a queue for a rollercoaster. Several policemen armed with AK74s order the masses, preventing violence and bloodshed. ;)² The orange metal railings continue even inside the temple. The inside of the temple is painted in the happy colorful tones red, turquoise, blue and orange. The floor is covered with leftovers from the offerings which adds to the dirty fair atmosphere. Following the queue enforced by the railings, you are guided through different rituals in the temple. One involves knotting a red handkerchief onto a metal grid, another one to throw sweets or money at the idols of the god. After putting a red dot on the wall, a brutal man grabs your coconut, smashes it open and gives you the pieces while the other pilgrims impatiently push you forward as if they’d fear to not be able to board the rolleroaster anymore… Or perhaps to get over with these rituals as soon as possible. At the end, you get a red spot on your third eye and that’s it. You are out. No rollercoaster. :(
As a pilgrim, you may hope that you completed all the rituals on the way through for the maximum amount of being blessed. Most pilgrims don’t even know what these rituals are good for, they just do it because it has done before so it can’t be bad. :D

¹ Indians don’t seem to care to keep something in a good condition. Many ruins or old buildings you find look much older than they really are. They are literally forgotten because nobody cares. I figure there are many many of those forgotten temples.

² But this is standard in India. Either the policemen just have bamboo sticks or an AK74. There is nothing in between. In front of nearly every bank or jewelry here, there is a man with a rifle. In front of upper-class shops and restaurants like McDonalds, Reebok or any supermarkets, there is a security man (without a gun) whose only task seems to be to open you the doors.

Entrance to the Maha Kali temple

On the way to the temple

Stall that sells goods for offering

Necklaces, bangles,…

A shrine

Another shrine

Is doch normaaaal!

I think the reason why I seldom write something about Chandigarh and the life here, is that there is really not so much going on here. Chandigarh is famous for it’s boring nightlife. Regrettably, the AIESECers here are not putting to much effort in communication with the trainees. Only a few are coming to our parties and women are not allowed out anyway (“Because they have to prepare for marriage”).
I’m one of the first people to leave the house in the morning and definitely the last one who returns from work at around 7-8 PM (my work is far away from the house). So on weekdays, we have only few hours in the evening together. I introduced a variant of the old chinese boardgame Noodle-Go which we play rather often.¹ But sometimes when I am really late, most have gone out somewhere when I return. The real life is going on on the weekend, while we traveling India!

The daily life and the way to the office is such a routine already, that I don’t notice all those things anymore which were totally shocking and exotic to me when I arrived here. Perhaps that’s why I don’t write about it (anymore). It is normal to squeeze in a bus where the people are hanging out of the doors or travel on the roof, it is normal to see car accidents almost every day, it is normal that people glare at you and treat you like some kind of superstar and even the rickshaw-drivers who want to bring you to a “cheap hotel” every day when you return to the bus stand from work are normal. I’m used to get attention from people just by looking at them (“Hanji? Yes, Sir?”), I already gave up to argue with people that “Sir” is not the right word long ago.
I guess when I am back home I’ll walk through the streets, baffled and irritated, and at one point shout “Hellooo??! I am HERE! LOOK at me!!!”. ;)

Only the day before yesterday, when I walked through a herd of cows just in front of our office, I stopped, thinking “Hey, wait a moment…o_O”. I stood there for more than ten minutes, watched the cows lazily lie on the grass verge, munching. Then I looked around. As if I have awakened from a dream, I suddenly saw all those things again that I learned to ignore (like in a SEP-field): Also on this small verge between the two streets I saw a barber shop whose shop mostly consisted out of a mirror that was pinned on a tree and a chair in front of it. A rickshaw repair-workshop of the same type and close to it, a group of rickshaw-drivers cooking their dinner on a small campfire. Auto-rickshaws were parked everywhere, waiting for their turn to substitute buses going to the main bus stand (if the people grew tired of waiting for the bus that wouldn’t come or is too overcrowded²). The story that Lena told me about India – that people live and sleep on the pavement and get their water from (a tub) in the gully to make tea – are true. It seems to be so normal that I almost forgot about that she told me that, still having some other pictures of this in my mind which appear less normal and more shocking.

This night I stayed at the other trainee house in Panchkula. Panchkula is another city that is closer to my work than Chandigarh. In the evening we played Moneyply (a bad Indian copy of Monopoly) and I remembered how boring Monopoly really is.
Anyway, I walked past some slums today morning and nearly failed to notice it: There were some new showrooms (shops) near our house and between the showrooms were spaces of about 6-8 metres where no showroom has been built yet. In those spaces, there were some huts and tents built out of rubbish, using the walls of the showrooms as supporting walls. These are the places where all those cycle-rickshaw-drivers, cleaning ladies and barber-shop-owners live. I peeked into some huts and was surprised: They had a TV and electrical light, but lived in a very small space and used a campfire as their heating. Inmidst all these rubbish-huts, there was a very small temple (or a big shrine) of Durga. Actually, it all looked pretty cosy, really like a small village community.

The longer I live in India, the less I am shocked about the possibility of just sleeping on the pavement or anywhere else – as long as it’s warm enough and not raining? So, “cosy” and “homely” were really the first words that came to my mind when I walked through the slum.

¹ I built the first version of the game out of the backside of a cheesy Hindu poster and a Kellog’s Cornflakes pack. It would not be black vs. white but cardboard vs. kellog’s ;). Now, I made a board out of proper cardboard and bought different colored noodles. The rules of Noodle-Go are basically the rules of Multiplayer-Go.

² Actually, this word doesn’t seem to exist in India ;)

The Noodle-Go board. I played more than a dozen games now since I am here. :)

Backside of our first improvised Go-Board. It shows Shiva with his wife Parvati and her son Ganesha.

This is the bazaar which can also be seen in this post. After rainfall, it needed some reinforcements ;)

Computerized hair style!! Possibly means that they have an electrical shaver there ;)

A tea shop which is NOT computerized (see the difference) :D… in front of a shop that is possibly computerized by the looks of it.

Bus stop near my office

Showrooms near my office

First weekend in Chandigarh

I realized that last weekend was the first weekend since I arrived in India where I stayed in Chandigarh on the weekend and was NOT dead ill, lying in bed. I was a bit ill, though – I caught light food poisoning on Thursday. Again – after eating at Singh’s Chicken¹. It was already gone on the weekend but I spent the whole weekend figuring out, what put me into a depressed mood in the first place. I was feeling blue since Thursday and because I did not regain my appetite till yesterday, I felt too week and too cold to travel.

On Sunday I went to an Cyber Cafe². Naturally, the guys from AIESEC still didn’t remove the virus (link: see bottom) from their office PCs but instead removed the only PC with which the Ubuntu Live CD worked I usually work with on these PCs. After checking email and logging in on different sites, I discovered that there is a virus on the computer in that Cyber Cafe, too. It corrupted my USB stick! So I could have gone to the office in the first place?! This really made me angry. Either that virus used the PC to host a big porn archive there or I discovered the private porn collection of the owner in a “hidden” drive by chance: “[…] second, there is a lot of porn hidden on drive D! Is this yours?” – “Noo!” – “OK than I delete it…”. Actually, I hope it was the latter :>. To look after the security of your computers in your Internet cafe should have top priority for every owner!

So, the weekend was boring and partly unnerving but finally I had some time to read “one hundred years of solitude”.

¹Singh’s Chicken is a dirty place, you can see occasionally rats running around and watch how they prepare the food in the open-to-the-street-kitchen. Somehow I keep returning there, perhaps because it tastes good and I say to myself that if there are any bugs or vermin in my fried rice, they will be well-done, fried and dead.
One time I saw something odd on the menu and I asked about it. The man replied “No no, chicken brain is out.”. Mjamee. :D

²Indians call Internet cafes “Cyber Cafes”… even though you can neither have a coffee there nor is it “cyber”. Die spinnen, die Inder ;)

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