Mid-trip Medley.

Having worked out that it’s been 2.5 months since my last entry, it feels like time has simultaneously stood still as well as flown by. So much has filled it, so I’ll dive right in.

I last wrote to you from spectacular Hampi, an endless hilly landscape of huge stone boulders stretching as far as the eye can see. As well being famous for its ancient temples (numbering over 550) it offers lots of opportunities for rope-free ‘bouldering’ –a climbing sport for human monkeys.

Hampi taught me three main things:
1) I am far more awestruck by the creations of nature itself than I am by man-made creations, however old, intricate and painstakingly crafted they may be.
2) When bouldering, there is an inescapable internal conflict that goes round in your head like so: this next move is very scary and I don’t really want to risk it, because one false move and that fall could lead to serious injury/paralysis/death. However, if I don’t risk this move then I wont get to the top of the rock, and after all, I am here to boulder. But if I risk this move that I really don’t want to do, then it might lead to serious injury/paralysis/death...but oh yeah, I still want to get to the top of this damn rock... This is essentially the biggest thrill, because ultimately you surprise yourself by making the move(s) you don’t want to do, and eventually get on top of the rock in one piece. Hurrah!
3) Coming down is far scarier than going up.

My final education from Hampi was the learning that India’s bicycle tyres are not the same size and English bicycle tyrers, but that they come a fraction smaller. Hence cycling has been pretty difficult ever since but thankfully not so bad that it has halted my travel on two wheels. I continued biking into the state of Karnataka where I enjoyed the bucket shower beach hut life of Gokarna for a week, joined by Phil all the way from Brighton! Cycling on, stopping at the 40ft Shiva for the night, I eventually reached central Karnataka.

Here I began my 3 week stay at the Bhaktivedanta Eco-Village, run by International Society for Krishna Consciousness. As also advocated by Gandhi, the focus here is a ‘return to the village’ and the building of a self-sustainable lifestyle. I soon discovered that, situated high up in the jungle foothills of Kodachadri mountain, this village comprises of one family, one anti-West long-stayer devotee from Texas, eight cows, many acres of agriculture and one temple (which also doubles up as the local primary school). It was a beautifully lush setting and the water we drunk was sourced directly from the mountain river. In return for some agricultural work and painting I got board and food for free.

It all sounds so simple, but for some reason it was far harder than anything I’d experienced on this trip yet. Forget the 90km days of hot and hilly cycling –the challenge had finally begun! Upon reflection, this was to do with the remoteness of the location, the sudden lack of purchasing power and the effects I felt on my body. Firstly, the tremendous isolation of the Eco-Village meant that the nearest occupied village was 2 hours away involving a very rough ride by jeep. For the first week I only spent about 10% of each day in the presence of other human beings which was when we gathered to eat meals on the temple floor. Even then, I found they spoke very little and asked almost no questions…leaving me with an unusually rare feeling of anonymity, but I kind of liked it. The (sweet and smiling) family was one of very few words and it’s probably the closest I’ll get to a silent retreat. I wondered if for some, it's the kind of place that drive the sane mad, and the mad sane?
I rose each morning at 6am and worked on the vegetable patch alone. I’d alternate between squatting on my heels to work and standing bent double with my bum in the air. After the first morning I’d already got tight hamstrings and blisters on my hands. It made me think, so many people in the world do this all day. It didn't take long for me to became the human parallel to Pavlov’s dog upon hearing the bell ring at 9am each day announcing breakfast. I love working hard for my food; it makes it taste so good!
Nonetheless, to begin with I found the 3 meals a day eating structure incredibly hard to adjust to, as anyone who knows me can tell you, I’ve been a ‘grazer’ for years in terms of eating habits. I’m also so used to grabbing a cup of tea as I please, or being able to buy and consume whenever it suits me…but with no shop around and no kitchen to raid, suddenly you’ve got no control over what you get and when. Probably because of the sudden lack of sugar in my diet, I had a massive energy drop that lasted over a week. It shouldn't be a big deal, but I found it hard. I also was fascinated how by how my body reacted and couldn’t quite believe how exhausted I felt in spite of my daytime naps and 9pm bedtimes. During the 1km walk between the temple and my room I felt every step was a ridiculous lead weight effort, and I knew that if I was a fainter, that first week in the jungle would have been a confirmation. The vivid dream I had on my first night still makes me laugh: I walked out of the Eco-Village to find a brightly shining Burger King, right there, in the middle of nowhere. Whilst I was saddened by the incongruous presence this MNC in such a remote location of natural beauty, I also experienced a huge wave of wicked delight in the fact that I suddenly had unrestricted access to cones of soft white ice cream. Yep: CHILD. I know.

What time I didn’t spend working or resting I often spent in the disheveled temple library, filling my educational gaps with books of geography, ecology and history, plus sifting through the many titles on yoga, Buddhism and spirituality etc. I really liked sitting on the straw floor of that room, surrounded by stacks of so many different titles.
I also loved being so immersed in the jungle. Those crickets! Their racket would come from across the valley in a ‘Mexican wave’ style, until they reached you with a deafening roar. I never got bored of the song bird that had mimicked a casual unmelodious whistle of a human being –it was just so human-like. My roommates included flying shiny beetles, earwigs, the traditional gecko and the very lovely transparent tree frogs with internal organs, sucking toes, bulging eyes and bendy thighs. I also had a vast array of ant species that occupied my room…the tiny microscopic ones, the biting red ones, the big fat black ones and the even blacker black ones complete with the white bums. The two meter snake outside my door one afternoon was also a highlight, as was catching sight of two red giant flying squirrel in the tree tops. And so you see, whilst I often felt a distinct sensation of social removal in this place, the feeling of aloneness never transgressed into one of loneliness per se.

However, the scene changed quite a lot when other volunteers arrived, including familiar faced Jamie from Brighton as well as a 19 year old boy from Germany. The latter called me into his room one night complaining of terrible fever. He couldn’t move his hands and was just staring at their rigidness with fear, in between bouts of vomit and toilet visits. His joints went from hot red until you got his hands, where his fingers were a blue-white and inflexibly taut straight. I’ve never seen anything like it; he did look awful. Whilst recovering after that he didn’t touch any food for three days and left hastily, still looking pretty sick. I like to assume he’s still alive?

There’s so much more to say about the Eco-Village and the values of the Krishna Consciousness movement, but I’ve already written too. In short, I admire their philosophy of “Simple Living, High Thinking” and readily uphold their values along the lines of self-sustainability and respect for nature and all living things. However, their beliefs surrounding contentious issues such as evolution, reincarnation, contraception and abortion etc remain..well…contentious. (I don’t think I’ll be coming home a devotee myself). Just before we wrap up the Eco-Village experience, I want to add that a couple of the Krishnas I came across had travelled the length and breath of South East Asia by every means of transport in the last forty years. They shared the most brilliant tales of their nomadic days with me, one particular example being Satvik from Italy who walked barefooted and bag-free from Goa to Calcutta in 1972 in 'just' three months. Immense!

If you ever want to volunteer at this place, here is their website for future reference: www.bev.org.in

Moving briskly on to Mysore, was lucky enough to see the famous Palace lit up at night by thousands of white bulbs. As so aptly commented by one of Jamie’s friends, “I didn’t know there was a Harrods in India”. Another experience worth mentioning is that Jamie and I ended up at a complete stranger’s wedding (by third-party invite) with no prior notice whatsoever. Embarrassingly under-dressed, we were given first row seats and stuck out like sore thumbs. Onwards to Kerala, we went to the biggest elephant festival in India (the photos speak for themselves). I loved the fact that the town’s school playground was essentially used as the elephant ‘changing room’. No crowd control –you could walk straight up to them and say hello. We got hosted by a hugely generous local for this festival. “Guests are Gods” is the saying here, and they mean it! The climax of the festivities was the deafening fireworks display at a horrible time in the morning. The display’s 3am scheduled start exemplified India Time perfectly by commencing at 4.50am. If you want to experience the nearest thing to the Blitz in terms of noise, falling ash, smoke clouds and explosions so bright they hurt your eyes, then head to the Thrissur elephant festival in April next year.

The lovely Alice came to visit me for two weeks. Haven't I been spoiled by all these Brighton faces! And never again will the fixating stare of a tiger walking straight towards us in the Born Free sanctuary hold us so captivated...What a magnificent beast it was. On one journey together, we had a taste of the monsoon rains when the hail was so strong we thought it might break the bus windows.

Thinking about it we have had a high number of very luxurious experiences with people we have met during our travels - most of whom seemed to be heavily inclined to drinking rather large quantities. One such extravagant case was lodging at an old colonial’s beautiful house buried deep in a wildlife sanctuary. We’ve come to learn that wild elephants are actually very dangerous and cause many deaths each year, so he had a suitably impressive electric fence to keep his house, garden, Royal Enfield motorbike, shiny black Shogun and BBQ set safe. However, whilst not knocking the generosity and kindness of our hosts, I am increasingly recognising that many affluent people I meet often appear somewhat lonely, not so healthy and quite honestly, bored. I'm not stating that wealth transforms everyone into fat, lazy, whingeing miss-fits with servants attending their every need...but there's probably a correlation there somewhere. Perception-wise, I also found it uncomfortable speeding through villages in a flash air conditioned 4x4 whilst kids below peered up at the tinted windows in the dust and the heat. It’s like a sudden disconnection from everything that’s going on in your surroundings, and it elevates the inevitable division one already feels (as a white foreigner in a less developed country) to an even higher level. Hmmm...Put me back on the rickety local bus please!

Finally, travelling around the Southern depths of India has led to bicycle-on-train scenarios. By and large this has been nothing short of stressful. Via sometimes intimidating, mostly frustrating and always heart-racing moments, I have learnt (the hard way) that:

- bicycles must be booked on luggage carriages
- bicycles must be booked on luggage carriages at least two hours prior to departure
- bicycles must not be locked
- bicycles must be left in the hands of the luggage carrier officers
- not every train has a luggage carriage, but who knows?
- even if a train has a luggage carriage, if the bicycle isn’t a priority to the luggage officers, it might not necessarily be sent on this precise train, but who knows?

…the number of times I have been half-looked at, with a shrug of the shoulders and a “maybe tomorrow Madam, come back tomorrow”.
The worst occasion was seeing my bike on the Kodai Road platform at 10pm, ready to board a luggage train attached to my night train, and then arriving to Bangalore in the morning only to find no cycle in sight, but just the blank expressions of the luggage carriers. For five days I phoned both station offices and got inconclusive, unconvincing and contradictory stories from either end. The day Alice and I took the 12hr detour back to Bangalore for a final attempt to retrieve it, I had fully prepared myself for the thieving of my very stealable wheelable bicycle. A 1.5hr wild goose-chase around Bangalore train station’s various luggage departments, luggage offices, luggage complexes and luggage storage houses later, and out is wheeled my dusty looking cycle; storage fine waiting to be paid and tatty pink release form singed for. Miraculous. I was pretty astonished to say the least. Hats off to you, Indian Railway Service!