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My fourth visit of India’s capital finally opened up a new perspective beyond first impressions, which basically could be summed up as “a place, where you do not want to stay longer than you have to”.
For the first time I was able to see beyond poverty, dirt, drugs and heat and discover the joy of life, which I have found in so many faces all over India. Quite a bit away from common places like Old Delhi and Connaught Place I was having dinner in a terrace restaurant observing the scene: Kids running all over the square, young girls gathered in small groups exchanging looks with the male youth, others loudly discussing, while enjoying their food.
Only taking this scenery of Delhi home with me made it worth returning after trekking through the Annapurna sanctuary and getting soaked in Kathmandu.

Contrary to my experience in India the monsoon was still on in Nepal’s capital causing not just suddenly flooded alleys but also dangerous mudflows in the surrounding mountains and streets in terrible conditions; That way a busride of a few kilometers could easily take up to a few hours, but still be rewarding experiencing considering the beautiful landscape passing by the window and the on-going scenary of hop-on musicans, vendors and roof-climbing passengers.

My luck with the weather returned while trekking up the Poon Hill through the Annapurna sancturary. After having heard that others have been waiting up to three days to be overwhelmed by this picture-perfect panorama, I could not had been anything else than happy.

Back in Kathmandu, packing up my backpack, I realized the first time that my journey is just about to finish. Mixed feelings accompanied me all the way through my flight to Delhi but summarized in gratefullness.

Delhi is my Mumbai, meaning that all my unfullfilled expectations of Bollywood’s capital came true in India’s capital. The rapid change between Keralas peaceful greenery and the poverty and drug loaded heat of Old Delhis dark and narrow streets threw me off the track for quite a bit. I found myself again reconsidering my second short visit to India’s capital in an overnight bus to Amritsar.

It must have been around 3 o’clock in the morning, when the permanent honking of the bus came to an end and the slight breeze through the window stopped cooling off facial sweat. Lights went on and some voice appeared in the darkness. Confused and tired I looked out off the window and found the bus standing still in the middle of a police court. Asking around I found out that neighter the bus company was operating legally nor the busdriver had a license, but the game was just about to begin.
Back and forth it went between policemen and staff. Desperate faces, loud arguments and a first offer, which got turned back under laugther. More jealing, less laughter and another proposition. Two hours passed. The result? We continued the journey to Amritsar with a three hour delay, but the same driver. And as the policemen will be able to afford some extra spendings this month, we weren’t even able to pay any further offical street tolls and were forced to take bumpy sideroads all the way up to the city of the Golden temple.
Anyway, in the end it was absolutely worth it: Hearing the chants of the Sikkhs in the Golden temple until late-night and watching the sun going down on the Pakistan boarder, while guards perform the daily flag ceremony make it easy to forget all kind of excertions.

A 18 hours trainride seems short after spending 37 hours rolling through India’s South: The landscape seems to fly by, just as the delicious Indian food and a short nap, some chai’s and a good conversation later I found myself in Mumbai, ready to be sucked.
Surprisingly the city doesn’t awake until 9-ish in the morning, and still then it was not as crowded and hot as I expected. Later that day I bumped into one of those Bollywood-talentscounts and ended up in bus with a bunch of foreigners on the way to the Bollywood studios in the North of Mumbai. The drive there, I must say, left a way deeper impression than the shooting itself: For hours I couldn’t spot the end of a sea of slums. I felt ashamed and helpless, looking down on the millions of sheds, which represents the housing of more than 70 percent of the people living in this city.

The shoot itself ended just in time to make my way back to trainstation. It was a short visit to Mumbai, but enough for me. Kerala, through which I passed at an earlier point of my trip, had left such a strong impression, that I just had to get back there.

I am sure everybody has his own definition of a paradise. And, probably according to our personal needs and preferences, we do have more than one concept in mind when we think of a heaven-like (atheists out there: please, do not take this literally!) place. A shoe fetishist might drop all his worries as soon as he enters a five-floor store filled up to the very end with the new collection of summer shoes, as for somebody else this same exact same situation causes headache and stress.

Anyway, my idea of paradise is based on this quite common picture of an island: Somewhere in the middle of nowhere, light-blue water, smooth waves, an unaccountable number of palm trees, empty beaches, coconuts and shells laying around, elephants, white sand, …

Sharing this with you, I can now state that I have been to Paradise aka “Andaman Islands” last week! The first morning I stepped out of my little palm tree hut strolling around the long white sand beach I hardly found any words to describe the beauty of this place (many more of those moments should follow throughout the week). Enjoying a refreshing bath in the middle of the night while looking at the palm trees and the beach, which lighted by the moonlight kind of looked like snow, or walking through the tropical rainforest reaching empty beaches were just two of the delights I enjoyed the last week.

Being back to India Mainland is quite a change after spending more than a week on picture-perfect islands surrounded by the light blue sea doing not much more than exploring the jungle, diving over coral reefs, drinking fresh coconut juice, etc.

As no news reached me, except one tsunami warning due to an earthquake between Birma and the Andaman Islands, it quite surprised seeing thousands of people walking around with facial masks. Later that day I read in “Chennai Times” that the H1N1 virus has spread around the nation and turned into a tremendous problem for some of the states of India. Nevertheless, all those threatening news don’t hold people back from preparing the festivities for tomorrows Independence day celebrations. After already enjoying this years’ “Bastille day” in France, I feel really lucky to be given the chance to experience another country’s national holiday celebrations.

One more thing: Yesterday, before I headed on to Mamalapuram, I was watching India’s national news channel. One of the three main headlines was about Austrian badminton players disappearing from the World Championship, which is held in India. According to the news they must have dropped out of the tournament without giving any reason. As Indian authorities have been quite upset about this incident, I just wanted

As much as that about this, it is about time for me to make my way towards the West coast. Isabella.

As I am just overwhelmed by impressions, I thought, instead of trying to put my diverse thoughts into a structured text (which would not work at the moment anyway), I am just going to throw out loose thoughts, that crossed my mind during the last hours:

The alternative to toiletpaper is a simple bucket full of water. Indian Mangos are even better than I expected.
17 US-Dollars for two trainrides between Chennai and Mumbai is not bad at all. Don”t trust your sense of orientation during the first hours after arrival Hot, hot, hot. The fight against world-wide poverty should be taken more serious. Thankfully, children never loose their smile. Cows do actually produce traffic jams. The open doors in Indian trains are a blessing. In former days, the room I am sleeping in must had been a “cyber-garage”. I gained a new definition of humidity and spicy food.

One thing I did today, besides exploring the city Chennai, is getting an Indian simcard. Whenever you want to get a hold of me during the next weeks, please try to contact the me under this number (my Austrian phonenumber will be switched of completely): 0091 996 220 21 25
Also, at all times it makes me happy to receive some news from home, or wherever

Taking this weblog a bit out it’s regular context, I want to use it during the next weeks as board of for reflections, statements and comments on my trip through India and Nepal. So whenever I find the time, the leisure and internet connection, I will try to update this page. Comments, recommendations etc. are very welcome. I also want to state that most of the annotations I am going to write down here are fully subjective and probably pretty unreflected, please just keep that in mind while reading it! As a starting point a found a quotation in the book “Notizen eines Weltbuergers” by William s. Burroughs (Sorry, but I wasn’t able to find in English):

“Berichte aus dem Leben sind keine geordnete Erazaehlung von der Geburt bis zum Tod. Sie sind eher zufaellig gesammelte Fragmente”.