Breakfast on the Nile

Some photos and notes to start out, and a loooooong arsed post coming up in a few days.

Cairo does not deserve one of its two reputations.

I'm not speaking of the first - of being a city of history and invasion, of decay and rebuilding, as the 'Mother of the World'. It certainly does deserve that reputation, and I say this after having seen only two sections of it.

But there is another, parallel Cairo, one that's famous for hassles and touts, pollution and scams, sexism and terror. This reputation was never earned, it was merely bestowed with staggering naivete.

We drifted around Bombay's international airport - all spiffy and new and utterly unappreciated by us - in a fog at midnight, one, two. After a tousled sleep on the airplane, I awoke to pre-dawn Cairo glittering below me. By the time a 'rosy fingered dawn' (to be Homeric about it) was creasing the horizon, we were in a ramshackle taxi, speeding towards downtown Cairo. The taxi smelt of gasoline, which worried me, and the driver wanted to smoke, which worried me more. We dissuaded him and he assured us the oil smell was from spilling it on his clothes earlier.

Why he wanted to smoke in that state...you know, I prefer not to think about it.

At the airport, five guys took our one luggage trolley to the curb and then all of them demanded baksheesh. They didn't get any and I considered myself thoroughly introduced to Cairo. I don't want to know why these five guys were hanging out in the airport parking lot at 5am to begin with.

Our hotel, which seemed to advertise itself so flamboyantly as being in its own building, is actually on the 7th floor of a generic building. The hotel itself, however, is fine, complete with five or six chain-smoking men who watch cricket and wait until some work comes there way, a charming Art Deco lobby, a good enough restaurant and a thoroughly sketchy bar (four stools, a bookcase with maybe five bottles of liquor on it, three of which are whiskey, a mini-fridge, a dusty old guy, enough smoke to rip a new hole in the ozone...and some ceramic puppy figurines - I kid you not. It's called "The Polo Lounge").

After a heavenly breakfast of eggs, bread (naan meets pita, they fall in love and have a baby, which we ate), wonderful coffee, orange juice, fig jam and spready cheese, we explored downtown Cairo a bit, taking in lots of Belle Epoque architecture along the way. I'm pretty sure "Belle Epoque" is French for "19th century buildings put up by imperialist bastards".

We then took the Metro to Coptic Cairo, an enclosed area that is/was the stronghold of Cairo's indigenous Christians. We chose this over the museum, mosques and Pyramids because, being jetlagged, we just didn't want to deal with the tourist hassle of the other places. It was a good choice; only one person asked us for baksheesh and everyone else was very friendly. At the Hanging Church, a free church guide explained a lot for us (we donated to the charity box afterwards), the tourism police were helpful, and domestic tourists enjoyed chatting with us. The expensive Coptic Museum was also, frankly, amazing. I'm happy I took in something more digestible than the Big Mama Museum today.

The most amazing part about Coptic Cairo - beyond the mashrabiyya windows and ornately carved ceilings, was seeing the fusion of Pagan beliefs and Christian ones in their art and mythos. Sure, most of their stone and textilework looked strictly Byzantine, but then you'd come across Dionysus holding a cross, or Aphrodite with an ankh, inset with a "Jesus Fish" - proof that old beliefs don't die immediately in the face of change. They're syncretized, maybe they become a part of folklore, maybe they die slowly, but they never fall under the sword. Cultures blend into one another, they change; they may rise by force but they rarely disappear the same way.

All in all, I like Cairo. I like it a lot. Sure, it's polluted but it's fairly safe and friendly and so far, low-hassle. I also had the most amazing babaghanouj since my great grandma used to make it, and that is truly a priceless thing.

Pictures of Backwaters

I'll actually write more about Kerala later...frankly this part of the trip was extremely pleasant but too 'comfortable'; it was too easy to sit back and be tourists and not really engage or interact with our surroundings as much. Being one of a horde of tourists (The Golden Haired Horde I suppose) means that you're almost categorized into those niches before you get off the boat - it also means that you get lazy. It's so easy to read the paper together or talk to each other that we sometimes forget to actively seek out experiences around us.

So while I could write a lovely trip report all about Kerala, it would put you to sleep. I'll attempt a few notes on it later, though.

At the moment we're in Cairo and frankly, all my mental energy is here. It's hard to think about India when there's so much to think of right under my nose.

My God, My India

I apologize for the lower-than-usual quality of these photos - with no editing software to rotate the vertical ones or clean up the lighting, contrasts and colors, they're not as good as they could be. Oh well.

I believe I last left off in Udupi, birthplace of the mighty masala dosa and location of a famous Krishna temple. We enjoyed a car festival on our second-to-last night there; it wasn't so much a car festival as a car-pushing at the behest of a heavy donator. People were taking blessings (bringing the smoke to their foreheads through cupped hands) from used fireworks and from people with fire, but I have to admit I didn't feel much in the way of spiritual purity.

The next day, however, was a different story. After a simple-but-delicious breakfast of masala dosa (what else?) we headed for Mangalore. We were dumped into a pile of fish; I tumbled off the bus and found myself face-to-face with a fishwife and ankle-deep in the water dripping off her wares.

Our first stop was the Manjunatha temple; a temple northeast of the city built in the Keralan style; after circumambulating (walking around the shrines before approaching directly) we sat next to one of the temple's benefactors and chatted for awhile as the noontime mahapuja (grand prayer ceremony) got underway. This temple does a fire puja twice a day, meaning lots of priests with lots of torches accompanied by drumming and cymballing. It was very, um, cymballic of a country so intent on its faith.

Manjunatha Temple is home to the Trilokshetra, one of the finest bronzes in India. It is a three-faced deity (a seated Shiva I believe) and considered the finest outside Tamil Nadu (they are quite proud of this; they have a little sign in several languages announcing it). I couldn't take a photo but I was awed at the nuanced beauty of the piece, which was so detailed that it seemed to be embroidered rather than cast.

Our next stop after the Milagres Church (nice, but not overwhelmingly impressive) was St. Aloysius College Chapel, which reminded me that great works of devotional art are not limited to India and Greater China:

St. Aloysius Chapel is covered on the inside - and I do mean covered - with frescoes. Fairly new frescoes, but fine nonetheless. I could nitpick that a few of the people depicted look a little stiff, but hey. The painted columns could be the envy of marble, and the friezes illustrating the life of Jesus were beautifully matched in color, tone and composition. The colors - mauve, rose, teak, cinnabar, cerulean, sunburst, all the colors you only see in catalogues - were magnificently matched and almost hummed, as though they were in tune somehow, in a fine aesthetic harmony.

It was the closest I've ever come in a Christian religious space to having a spiritual moment, and I am avowedly non-spiritual.

We left Mangalore the next day for Kannur, a small town in northern Kerala. There are really only two things to do there (besides visit a weaving cooperative) - go to the beach and see Theyyam. We stayed at Costa Malabari (very nice - it's a small hotel in a 120-year old traditional house) and first, went to the beach:

...a lovely semi-private and peaceful cove. The sand wasn't as white and the water not as blue as in the Philippines or Indonesia, but it was still quite lovely. The next morning, we rose at 4am and sleepily piled off in a rickshaw to head 20 miles out to see Theyyam:

Theyyam is a north Keralan temple ''dance" - not so much a dance as a form of devotion. Related in form to Kathakali (next post), devotees wear large, unnatural costumes and terrifying makeup and allow themselves to become possessed by the gods of the temple. It's similar in a way to the dangki tradition of Taiwan, except they don't hurt themselves. They just dance a lot, issue proclamations and sayings from the gods, and generally run about. We saw two dancers, one in a very tall mask and one in a wide skirt, in which flaming torches were set, as well as a flaming headdress. Sorry that the picture is not so good, but it was hard to take photos in the pre-dawn darkness and I felt a flash would be intrusive.

The torch-bearer would run up to the audience - separated by gender - who would joyfully take blessings from the smoke. It's the only time I really feel I can use the word worshipful and mean it. I didn't expect this and Brendan and I were the only foreigners there, so of course he had to run up to me first (the gods apparrently like me) - which was utterly terrifying.

The women around me thought it was hilarious, of course.

After Kannur, we headed up into the hills to the Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary. We stayed at Varnam Homestay (highly recommended - I can't speak highly enough of them). Not knowing the distance involved, we hired a Jeep to take us from Mananthavady, the town where the bus let us off. It should have been Rs. 200 - we paid 600 (about $12 US; not a big deal). Turns out the proprietor of the homestay is a police officer who lodged a complaint about the Jeep driver...sweet, sweet revenge.

The next day, we took a Jeep safari through Tholpetty, seeing Hanuman monkeys (langurs), a wild bison and not one but three wild elephants:

Varnam is also near a tribal area, dotted with villages and paddies. You can usually tell tribal women because unlike the other local Hindus, they cover their hair, and unlike the local Muslims, they use kerchiefs, not shawls or hijab.

It was lovely, being welcomed in villages that aren't reliant on the tourist trade or saturated with souvenir shops, and to just get out and meet some friendly people. As monkeys played in the bamboo at the edge of the clearing, we watched the village children run home across the dry rice paddies - almost all of them stopped to us to first gape, then chat. At least one of them had a cell phone; let this be a lesson to American parents who think it's spoiling to give such devices to children.

Our meals at Varnam were excellent, served by candlelight and flashlight as the power went out every night at 8pm sharp for exactly 30 minutes. Amidst the dim glow we enjoyed savory chicken curry, daal of various flavors, some traditional Keralan foods from the mountains including freshwater fish and a delicious green vegetable with potato, cooked with lots of fenugreek leaf and mustard seed, and "magic balls" - rice flour balls filled with spiced coconut gratings and jaggery - raw sugar. Laying in the hammock or relaxing in the traditional-style house, I felt quiet, so at peace as to be sleepy while Beena (mistress of the house) led the cows in or Don (their son) raked the drying coffee .

A lover of coffee since I was about 3 years old, it was utter bliss to fall asleep rocking in the hammock listening to those coffee beans roll back and forth under the noontime sky with a gentle scritch-scratch.

Our next stop was Calicut; unfortunately most of my photos from this stop are vertical so I'll have to post them later. We had only a half day in Calicut and spent it shopping (approximately 110% of the city's income comes from the UAE and overseas Indians working there, so shopping options are plentiful) and visiting ancient wooden Moppila mosques - the mosques built 700-1100 years ago before the Portuguese came through and defaced them all. Fortunately most are still around and still active today.

Unfortunately, thanks to the Gulf influences, they are rather orthodox mosques so I, as a woman, was not allowed to enter. Brendan, bless his progressive heart, wouldn't go in without me. When invited by some students he said "Sorry - either we both go or neither of us do." (For the record I would have let him enter if he'd really wanted to).

The next morning we bundled into a train bound for Cochin - the stuff of spice and dreams.

A few photos of Cochin before my next post:

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Windows and Mirrors II

(Please read the post below to preserve the order of these two sections)

On the train to Bangalore, from which we transferred to a Mangalore-bound bus, we shared a compartment with several friendly people. Before boarding we picked up dinner; curd rice (rice and plain yoghurt with spices) for Brendan, and Lemon Rice (hard to explain, kind of like a non-greasy biriyani) for me.

After we finished eating as the train chortled away, we were greeted by a deep, fermented smell. One of our kind cabin-mates had uncontrollable belching gas and did not look one jot happy about it. Every few minutes, from the depths of his kidneys, he released a rumbling, Richter-scale burp that soaked the air with a dark, intestinal stench. I set my will against my gorge and smiled silently as my stomach pickled itself.

Waiting for our bus to Mangalore, from Bangalore - confusing, I know - was quite the adventure. Trying to get a clear answer in India is like playing an extended game of "Who's On First?"

"Is this where we catch the bus to Mangalore?"
"Yes."
"So the bus to Mangalore will come here?"
"No."
"No?"
"Yes."
"Yes?"
"You catch the bus to Mangalore here?"
"There."
"Oh. You catch it there?"
"Yes."
"Yes - so the bus to Mangalore comes in there."
"No."
"Then where does it come in?"
"Here."
"OK, then we wait here for the bus to Mangalore?"
"No, you are waiting there and bus is coming."
"Coming there?"
"No, coming here, going there."
"Going where?"
"To Mangalore."
"I know. But where do we get on?"
"Here. Or there only."
"Wait, is it here or there?"
"Yes."

(The bus ended up pulling in "here" but stopping "there" after picking up some passengers. I think.)

When we finally arrived in Mangalore, and then Udupi, 24 hours later (yes, you read that right, 24 hours to get across one Indian state). We took KSRTC - the state transit company - which meant that our breaks were all at government-run rest areas.

And let me tell you, the food at these places is fan-freaking-tastic. I had the best vadai of my life at a tiny whitewashed building quite literally in the middle of nowhere; in all directions was a rock-strewn plain. Later on we stopped at a small restaurant at the foot of the Western Ghats, near the Coorg area where cardamom, cocoa and coffee are grown. We weren't hungry but had the most delicious cardamom-spiced deep roastted coffee; easily rivalling Sumatra as some of the best coffee I've ever tasted.

Hampi and Mangalore are mirror images of each other. They have only the red dust in common; otherwise one is at the edge of the great Deccan plateau, the other is a port renowned for spice and coffee exports since the Middle Ages. One is a backpacker town strewn with scantily-clad white women and grungy white men; the other has been influenced by Arab, mostly Yemeni, traders for centuries, has few foreigners and many women wear burkhas. Hampi is full of rickshaw mafia trying to suck you dry like so many vampire bats - Udupi and Mangalore are honest and friendly places. One has crumbling ruins set around a newly developed town; the other is full of crumbling Portuguese-style buildings.

Both Hampi and Udupi are saturated with Iberian and Arab influences:






But Udupi, the smaller of the two and arguably the more pleasant place to stay, is also famed as the birthplace of the humble, yet delicious, dosa:

A far cry from the sad and soggy banana pancakes of Hampi.

(This is, by the way, why so many South Indian restaurants abroad are named "Udupi Palace" or the like.)

I am sorry that I had to include my worst photo here, but the others need to be rotated and this cybercafe computer won't allow that.

Udupi is also the site of a famous Krishna temple, which is awash with foreigners becoming enlightened. It's not Hare Krishna but shares many of the same values and is well-known in the West. The temple is, however, lovely and the people here are lovely. It has three temple chariots ("cars"), all in traditional Karnatakan style. We were lucky enough to see one of them pulled around 'Car Street' - a service performed for devotees who donate a certain amount to that end. Photos of that later; they can't be posted now.

We noticed a lot of similarities, however, with Taiwanese god processionals. Similar sorts of music and dancing, fireworks, large costumed deities dancing, a large chariot/palanquin being pulled along. It makes you wonder if the devotional festivals of India and China have a common root (Buddhism is too young, methinks, and the Buddhist temples of Taiwan don't do this as much as the Daoist ones), but diverged as they split. China's would have died out in the Cultural Revolution, but lived on in Taiwan. Makes you think.

Advertising in India is usually painted on buildings, not just along billboards. At times it is quite photogenic.

...more later!

Windows and Mirrors I

My Sweetie Honey Pie, Brendan in Hampi

(I can't be affectionate in real life in India so I have to blog affectionately)

Bangalore is not a terribly fascinating city unless you've got an insatiable lust for call centers. We had planned to get a few things done; book hotels in Kerala, eat a good meal and print our PDF guidebook pages for Egypt, in that order - and then head out to the ISKCON temple before meeting my friend Hemant for drinks. The ISKCON temple is apparently a massive glass-and-steel temple with traditional gopurams (temple gates) attached; it even has a shopping mall inside.

So we are told, anyway - we never made it. It took us most of the day to run the errands we needed to finish and the piece of Bangalore we saw while doing so was enough for us. It was a delight to see Hemant, but unfortunately had to be on the Hampi Express within hours.

We hurtled through the night on the train; Brendan's first Indian train experience. We stopped the chai-wallah and drank around of the sweet stuff in honor of our trip before Brendan crawled atop the highest bunk (the middle bunk has to be pulled up but the top is always rolled out) and promptly fell asleep. It was probably the Indian heat; I have been finding myself dropping into the netherworld earlier and earlier each night and nodding off on buses and trains during the day. Something about the sun here saps the energy from your bones.

We awoke at 6am to a Martian heath:

All red dust and diaphanous white light.

Hampi itself is one of those 'land of contrast' cliches - the beauty of a highly civilized culture and the crumbling ruins that now mark its existence. Friendly restaurant proprietors and scheming rickshaw drivers. A beautiful river and a red, sun-dumped landscape. Temple gates, only 500 years old - that's not a lot in the Indian historical canon - that looked as though bites had been taken out of them:

Half-Eaten Gopuram

It was, however, a treat to show Brendan his first Indian temples...in India. I found myself drawn to photographing not only individual sculptures, but scenes with pillars and windows

It sounds silly, almost cliched, but I love being blessed by temple elephants. The elephant at the temple in town is particularly friendly. For one or two rupees, you get a holy bop on the head and if he's lucky, he gets a banana (he got a lot of bananas from us).

Photographing ruins and historical sights is all well and good, but besides photographing the lathe-turned columns and sculptures of Hampi, I find local people interesting photographic subjects as well. That's not a reflection on race or 'local color' - I do the same thing in the USA. Having people in your photographs adds something to them, otherwise you have a pile of pictures of buildings and nothing of what life is actually like.

It was really in Hampi, though, that my penchant for photographing people through windows and doors took hold. This was especially fun in the area full of royal ruins, which are remarkably well-preserved when compared to the state of the city around them. The problem with these particular ruins aren't that they're mobbed with tourists or expensive to enter; it's that they're surrounded mostly by gardens and landscaping and therefore lose all sense of self.

The walls, however, are still quite arresting, all over the city. Some are plain brick faces, others are adorned just so:

On the third day we left the 'ruins' behind and took a coracle - a small basket-boat - across the thin river and got ripped off in the process. Although the ride was over 1 kilometer, it should not have cost 300 rupees (and that after bargaining down from 1,000 and then 600). We didn't feel too bad about handing over far too much money though; the 'boatman' was a young boy and he was obviously not well. He vomited copiously into the river about halfway through our trip, not far from some fording cattle. If anyone deserved all that extra money, it was him. We gave him a little baksheesh on top of the extraordinarily extortionary price because we suspected his father would pocket the rest of the money. We didn't feel this was right; his father wasn't rowing two chubby foreigners down a river while heaving up the contents of his stomach.

The ride was otherwise gorgeous; red boulders in teh distance and green grasses up close, with the tiny whitewashed castle of the Hanuman temple atop a hill straight ahead.

The Hanuman temple (monkey god, companion and comrade to Lord Rama) was awash not only in gorgeous views, white paint and of course monkeys - but also foreigners. The "Om" shirt and dreadlocked wearing kind. No mind; the views were gorgeous.

One of the trees at the Hanuman Temple

On the way up, we saw a single Hanuman Monkey among the macaques. The monkey god watching us?

Brendan and the glorious view

Another cliche to be sure, but the rice paddy and sugarcaned ground below looked just like a patchwork of green stained glass and clouded mirrors.

The monkey god Hanuman

Tiny Hanuman Temple

We left that night for Mangalore; the mirror image and exact opposite of Hampi. More on that in the post above

Hampi

We're in India now, online hiding from the heat of the day as we await the departure of our train bound for Bangalore (from which we'll transfer to Udupi by bus).

Hampi, a small town smack in the middle of breathtaking ruins from the capital of Vijayanagara (c. 1500 AD, plus/minus a few hundred years in each direction), is a place I could take or leave. It's got all the amenities - internet, travel booking, money changing, guesthouses - everything a traveler needs. It's got some really friendly people; our guesthouse was run by a good, honest family who gave us a fair exchange rate to change money and gave us the low-down on fair prices. The three small restaurants where we chose to eat most of our meals are all run by lovely people. If you look beyond the backpacker cafes, it's got some good food.

But every other business exists to serve backpackers, and there are hordes of them. Fisherman's Pants Wearing Hordes. They wear inappropriate clothing (the men looking like poor farmers or worse, brahmin priests who really need to do a load of laundry, the women wearing shorts and tank tops). They eat crappy backpacker food in India - India, the land of absolutely delicious food - and they walk around at 21 or 22 pretending to be enlightened.

So, ahh, despite meeting some lovely locals, I could take or leave the town.

The place where we ate dinner most nights makes all food fresh and the owner put on the Inaugural address for us:



The ruins, however, are spectacular. Worth suffering the Om t-shirts and peasant pants, the muesli and banana pancakes.

Rather than rave about how amazing the ruins of Vijayanagara are, I'll show you some photos and let the images speak for themselves.

Hemakuta Hill

the Hanuman Temple

Temple carving

Temple activities

The Queen's Bath


Giant Nandi and other structures at the far end of Hampi Bazaar


Ruined gopuram

Salvaged Statue

The Underground Temple

Brahmins washing dhotis