Konkan Railway - as seen on TV (where's Chris Tarrant?)

St. Valentine's Day, Thursday 14 February

The idea for this trip came from watching Chris Tarrant's "Great Railway Journeys" television programme about the Konkan Railway, broadcast December 2012.  The Konkan line was built 20 years ago and follows the coastline south from Mumbai to Mangalore, a major engineering feat because of its hilly terrain with many estuaries to span.

Thanks to the globalisation of popular culture, the media (Bombay Times, Times of India) are full of "lurve" today - 35% off diamond studded bracelets, mobile 'phones wrapped in pink heart ribbons, and a feature on how to choose your "V-day tattoo". (The passionate embrace tattoo illustrated is surpringly raunchy). My mobile keeps bleating at me with irritating messages saying "Love me, love me not" followed by something incomprehensible in Hindi which apparently costs just Rs. 3 (even in India I doubt if you can buy much passion for that.) I switch it/her/him off. Not that any of this disturbs the consciousness of the street sleepers (just a few) I step round on my way to the station to catch the 06.55 Mandova express to Goa. CST Station, the biggest in Asia, transports 3 m. passengers every day (many of them arriving at about the same time as me) with over 130 suburban and mainline train departures every day. Some Slumdog Millionaire scenes were filmed her, Despite the enormous potential for chaos, it's surprisingly orderly and disciplined.

Preparing to board. Note time.

I have the compartment (First Class) to  myself, but just as I'm planning to stretch out and seek my own oblivion, we stop in the suburb of Dadar where two retired gents (brothers, improbably named Alex and Kevin) take their seats in "my" compartment  This is not the fastest (or newest) of trains, but the air-con is super efficient and I have to dig out my sweatshirt. Goa is said to be THE place to chill out, so the train gives me practice. I watch the morning commuter trains heading back into the city. It's true, people really do hang out of the open doors. Thousands are killed every year from falling out of trains. (Further down the line, to warm up and better admire the scenery, I open our carriage door and "hang out" myself. It's exhilarating, and I'm just starting to get the hang of holding on when a guard comes along, tells me off and closes the door again. He couldn't do that on a suburban train as they don't have doors. I'm not sure if his concern was for my safety or the effect of an open door on the aircon.)

This train is moving !

It is almost 8.30 am before we finally leave the outskirts of mega-Mumbai (pop. 16 m.) behind and emerge into green and hilly open country. By which time I have read the papers from cover to cover. Just as well. I learn that there is to be a general strike - or bharat bandh - next week on 20/21 Feb which may affect train services. Meanwhile, from today (allegedly) passengers on the Konkan Railway on which I'm travelling "will enjoy the pleasure of shopping right from their train seat during their journey." Apparently, travellers who have missed an opportunity to purchase "essentials" before setting out will be able to buy - wait for it - lifestyle watches, portable music systems and MP3 players, car inverters, designer sunglasses, trendy toys and "spy pens with video recorder." Not all passengers are over moon. Some say they'd rather the railways gave them cleaner toilets or better food, or maybe they don't want to be spied on. Another nugget - Police Commissioner Satyan Pal Singh has complained that "criminals no longer fear the police. Because of human rights activists, we can no loger beat them up in public." The implication of the last two words is chilling. 

Railway lunch. Note tiffin tins.

1 pm. I have already consumed several cups of steamy liquid from the "car fee" and chai-wallas. Now our pre-ordered lunches arrive (not included in the ticket price) on time, unlike the train, which is over an hour behind schedule. Tasty egg and chicken biryani delivered to the compartment in a tiffin tin, followed by slices of mixed fresh fruits. Hard on the heels of lunch comes the man with the pad of complaints/suggestions forms, which he urges us all to write up. I praise the food but suggest they turn down the A/C. My Indian companions claim to have seen a cockroach and say "they should really tighten up on hygiene, especially in first class." By this time, we are half way there. If you saw the Chris Tarrant programme, this is the stretch with the deep river valleys, long viaducts, and tunnels up to 6 kms long. It's pretty impressive, but would be better appreciated from an open door. Tarrant got away with it - why not me? At Ratnagiri, I open the door once more when no-one's looking to photograph the lorries loaded on to trucks at the platform, but there's no time to jump into a cab for a chat with the driver, as Tarrant did.

Loaded lorry. Time for a touch-up

6 pm. The train is now running over two hours late. It will be dark when we arrive in Margao, so I change plan, 'phone the La Flo.r Hotel as recommended in the Footprint Guide and book myself in for a night in town. I'll leave the beach for later. The tuk-tuk from the station is Rs. 80, only half what the tout on the platform quoted, and I can't at first believe my good fortune when I get there. It looks and feels like a proper hotel, complete with uniformed staff, bar and restaurant, but the rate is a modest Rs. 1050 (£13), not the 1500 I thought he said. Even the room appears clean, moderately spacious, with AC and a generous squirt of mozzie-spray from a man with a can. There has to be a catch. There is. As I take a much-needed shower I hear a very loud and familiar claxon hooting outside the window. Yes, the railway line is right outside my window just across the car park. Hope I don't sleep walk or I'll become a statistic. Pity I forgot the Ian Allen train spotters' guide to S. India as I can see the engine numbers even without my glasses. . Then my eye is caught by a movement on my room's marble floor. A very large cockroach is scuttling steadily from the bathroom, where I must have disturbed its lair. It is chocolate brown, shiny, and every bit as big as the largest of its ruddy-hued East African cousins with which I used to do battle. I squash it under foot, push its corpse into the corridor, and point it out to the can man. My chicken tikka, however, is excellent, but much spicier than the stuff from the jars at home. But beer is 40p a pint, and a double Honey Bee (oh elixir!) brandy is just Rs. 20 (24 p.) Maybe I have landed on my feet after all.

A Bombay Mix for Ash Wednesday

As befits Ash Wednesday, it's a day for churches and temples. St. Thomas's Anglican Cathedral is a stately Georgian (1718) temple to Englishness, its walls lined with top-notch monuments to top-notch people. These include one who "died in the discharge of his duties against the Coolies" and Capt. Nicholas Hardinge RN whose magnificent monument (above) records his death while emulating his hero Nelson. But the church is more than a mausoleum: it still gleams from a recent renovation, the duster-wallas are busy polishing, and several people are deep in prayer in the pews. Well, not pews, but those elegant rattan-seated armchairs favoured by up-market Anglo-Indian Christians. The sanctuary is draped in Lenten purple, and I spot a poster advertising Sung Eucharist (with imposition of ashes) at 7.30 and vow to return this evening.

Flying buttresses, St Thomas's

Head towards the harbour and the Gateway of India by way of Horniman Circle gardens where I feed my last British Airways bun to the ducks on the pond. It now dawns on me why Mumbai looks so familiar. It's nothing to do with Slumdog Millionaire, which could be on another planet. Even the streets here are broad, uncrowded, clean in an Indian sort of way and with fewer beggars than Norwich (but with a lot of expectant dogs). It's just that so many buildings are larger-than-life replicas. 

Gateway (bottom right) somewhat dwarfed these days

The Central Library is a stretched, white-painted version of the National Gallery, St. Andrews (the Scottish Kirk) is St Martin in the Fields, the Prince of Wales Museum is Brighton Pavilion enlarged and brought home to Asia, the Royal Bombay Yacht Club is a Renaissance palace, and the Gateway of India is a triumphal arch on a grand scale with Moghul details thrown in for good measure. 

To Elephanta Island by small ferry, a one hour trip as it's about15 kms offshore, The Portuguese "discovered" the island in the 1500s and named it after a huge stone elephant they found guarding the caves. Such was the civilizing influence of Catholic Christendom, they proceeded to chuck the elephant into the sea and used the refined, already 1,000 year old, statues they found within for musket practice. Happily for us - and unlike the Taliban in our day - they lacked either the will or the skill to totally destroy the ancient and awe-inspiring statues and much remains today. It's now a UNESCO World Heritage Site (of course) and one that exceeds any expectations (it's said even Rodin was "struck dumb" by what he saw). I try to avoid purple prose, so just check out the photos.

Mumbai skyline

Inevitably I spend far longer than anticipated. I run (literally) the gauntlet of the souvenir sellers arcade (stopping only for a Jesus Saves 'fridge magnet, a bargain at 20 p - it is Ash Weds!) but still miss the "last" ferry by a whisker. It turns out that, despite all the notices warning of final departure times, there is a "last last" ferry after all), which brings me back to Mumbai just as the sun sets behind the Gateway. 

And so I creep into the back of St Thomas's a little late, if not last. My thoughts are with my fellow choristers in Wymondham preparing for the vocal challenges of Allegri's famous Miserere. St Thomas's has a competent-ish purple-robed choir (though they don't attempt the Miserere.) They sing Forty Days and Forty Nights so slowly that I this is how long it will drag on. I sing rather loudly in an attempt to speed them up (an old Wymondham ruse), but abandon this approach when people start to turn round and stare. The service is familiar, dignified and quite joyous, and I find it surprisingly moving. The lessons and sermon are hard to hear in the echoey acoustic with fans whirring and car horns peeping outside. Just when I thought I'd avoided any obvious gaffes (e.g. sitting on the "ladies side" - Indians don't take sides), it is time for communion. Too late I spot that most men have removed their shoes to go up barefoot, apart from one old man who has brought his bedroom slippers. Kneeling at the altar rails, I see the priest also is barefoot in the sanctuary. I feel a bit of a heel, but hope it won't harm my soul.

Sorry - ran out of time. More photos to follow. On train tomorrow.

Wrong Way to Bombay

Monday 11 Feb. 

I do love notices !

To anyone who's just joined, or rejoined, hello and welcome. Namaste. I'm back in India for 3 weeks, travelling solo, visiting Mumbai (briefly), then on to Goa and Kerala. I won't reveal the route plan, as it's very flexible at this stage. After Mumbai, no hotels booked, only two of perhaps many train trips reserved. I could end up anywhere, almost. Read on.

Tuesday 12 Feb

For the (my) record, leave Wymondham and my sandwiches behind, arriving at Heathrow 5 with hours to spare. I'm flying stand-by with Kind Nephew Simon's (not quite) free BA staff ticket, and he's warned me that if the plane is full they won't let me board. But they do. There are several spare seats in the middle rows, and KNS has emailed the captain to drive carefully as there's an aged uncle on board. I am awarded a "partial upgrade" to a window seat with a empty place between me an a charming young Indian next the aisle . We congratulate each other on our good fortune, and he 'phones his Mum in Bradford to tell her how relieved he is not to have to sit next to this aged beardy, though he did't put it quite like that in my earshot. 

Flight leaves on time at 9.25pm, but the long wait for food (after midnight!) makes some people restive. I sleep. Luck runs thin in Mumbai, however. I should explain (in case you didn't know) that this is my second visit to India within the 6-month term of my current visa. It's a tourist "multiple" visa, though that's a bit of a misnomer as the regulations state that if you make more than one visit, there must be a gap of at least 60 clear days between visits. So, for multiple, read two (or perhaps three if you fancy day trips to the sub-continent). What the rules don't state is that having declared a "port of entry" on the application, they expect you always to use the same route, and Mumbai (or Bombay) is definitely not Kolkata (or even Calcutta). So, I go to the immigration desk on arrival and show my passport/visa. Man looks me up and down in a friendly enough way, then a shadow flits across his moustachio. Perhaps he reads the Daily Mail, and thinks I may be a covert Romanian. He makes a telephone call (in Hindi, of course), then "invites" me to follow him to an interview room. Here a gang of four assemble and discuss my case. They have that Midsomer Murders technique of holding the document at arms length and repeatedly glancing from passport to me and back. "Your visa clearly states Kolkata," they remind me again and again. "So why you have come to Mumbai?" It's a taxing one to answer without sounding cheeky. Then, (do I detect a CPS barrister in training?) "If you go to France," they say, "and enter at Paris, you would not expect to go back again and enter at........ (voice fades)" I prompt "Calais?" just to sound helpful. "Yes, Calais," they agree. Well, actually....... Sometimes it's so hard not to sound a little presumptuous. In the end, they call the "big boss." Golly, she is big, too. We rehearse the script yet again. She tells me in no uncertain terms that Kolkata it states, Kolkata it means, and Kolkata it must be. I must fly on to Kolkata, then come back to Mumbai if I so wish, but leave again from Kolkata. But my hotel is booked here, I protest. Eventually, even she tires of the debate. She relents and sends for the rubber stamp with which she formally admits me. As I leave, one of the other immigration officers winks confidentially at me, "she is being very kind today," he says. Where DID they learn this bureaucracy? Oh, I remember, it was from us!

As I go for a pre-paid taxi (its 22 congested kms. from the airport to the city centre) I switch on my Indian mobile telephone which proceeds to bleat at me with a backlog of text after irritating text. The first to arrive says "Have you checked your blood sugar level? Dial *512*267# for further weight loss tips." I buy a copy of Mumbai Mid Day (tabloid newspaper) and read that this year urban Indians are "gifting" each other pre-Valentine's Day vouchers for "botox boosters and butt jobs." In case you're in any doubt (I was) the article later defines the latter as "skin-tightening treatment for the buttocks to ensure a wrinkle-free relationship." Bottoms up!

I don't venture far this afternoon and turn down the hotel's offer of a "slum tour" for tomorrow. I've no wish to be a voyeur of other people's misery. The Travellers Hotel is just a short walk from some of the world's most over-the-top architecture. The Byzantine City Hall (as we might call it), the orientalised Florentine Times of India building, the General Post Office like a huge grey granite mosque and especially the totally barmy CST Station (formerly Victoria Terminus) with just about every architectural style stretched to its limits must set the pulse racing in even the mildest-mannered architecture buff. The last mentioned is, incidentally, the largest British building in India but manages (I think) to avoid being pompous. It's just too silly. It's like a whole family of St. Pancrases gathered together for a group photo, and it's a World Heritage Site. See for yourself (photo attached). 

[I tried to upload this to the blog at 00.30, but the wi-fi was switched off. However, I made the rather startling discoverey that the staff here sleep on thin mattresses in the corridors outside the bedroom doors!]

Next Trip - February 2013

It's official - thanks to pilot nephew Simon, I now have a ticket to return to India in February. Fly to Mumbai on Monday 11 February. From there I plan to head south down the coast on the Konkan Railway visiting south Goa and Kerala. Watch this space.

Sunday: Heading homeward, plus a savage crop

Name and shame - Howrah Station rogues gallery

I sleep fitfully and wake with the alarm to hurry out for a tuk-tuk to the station. Mine is a second class "AC chair car" ticket. It looks a bit down-at-heel. but is comfortable enough. It's also a bargain. For less than a fiver, I travel 507 kms. (distance always shown on Indian rail tickets), with bottled water, newspaper, breakfast and lunch included. Serving 1200 warmish IR meals to passengers from the confines of a railway carriage kitchen is an impresive organisational feat. The landscape slips by: more long viaducts over estuaries, more flat and fertile fields, no oxen. This must be the mechanised grain basket of the Bay of Bengal. The gent in the next seat does not speak; he's reading a Bengali book, and I suspect that he doesn't speak English. However, about half an hour before we hit Howrah, he suddenly opens up, says he is a manager with State Bank of India, and engages me in an earnest discussion on Keynsian economics, the Imperial antecedents of Sino-Indian conflict, the self-deception of America, industrialisation in the developing world, and how fortunate we are in Britain to have so much uncrowded space.

My horoscope (Taurus) in the Calcutta Sunday Telegraph magazine says of the week ahead, "It will be a great opportunity to catch up with paperwork and other tedious chores." I'm not sure it will be so great. The front page is given over to colour adverts for up -market apartments in Calcutta's new satellite towns. So the rich will lock themselves in gated developments (with pool, fitness clinic, play facilities and nearby shopping mall) while the rest go rot. Haven't we seen that somewhere before?

Boarding the ferry - space for one more? (yes)

I arrive back in Calcutta with time to kill, so seek out the ferry pontoons opposite Howrah Station and take a boat trip to the furthest ferry point upriver. I'd assumed that the Ganges/Hooghly always flowed "downhill", but of course it's tidal here, and the tide is coming in fast, so it's a speedy trip under the bridgeand beyond. The bathing and (gas-powered) burning ghats are busy; as we pass by, a huddle of mourners gently place someone's ashen remains in the river to float off to eternity (with a brief detour upstream.) At my disembarcation point I stop to watch people bathing and scrubbing laundry on the steps, though the colour of the water, like weak mock turtle soup,  may explain why poorer Calcuttans' shirts are rarely Persil white. 

Washing in the Hooghly

From the ghat, I venture up a suburban street, dragging my little trolley case behind me, but I am hounded by taxi drivers who want to know where I want to go. They have no English, and call in an interpreter, but even he cannot seem to comprehend that I just want to take a walk for its own sake. Walking is what you do to get somewhere, not for pleasure or curiosity. I insist, and continue, photographing people asleep and snoring on a temple floor, in a handcart and at home under a makeshift shelter. It is Sunday afternoon, after all. 

Temple sleepers, Sunday afternoon

But some shops are open for business, and I decide to get my hair cut. The "holiday souvenir haircut" is a tradition of my travels (like buying local toothpaste), a must-have for the return trip. The barber is a suave-looking fellow, bearing some resemblance to Sweeney Todd in the film. He orders me rather abruptly to sit and wait while he finishes shaving himself in front of the mirror. This is a time-consuming process involving twice lathering his face then scraping it off with a steel cutthroat razor. I decide to stick to a simple cut at Rs. 30  (35p.) and not go for the shave (Rs. 20) or other extras on offer like face/head/arm massage, creamed face or scented hair oil. As I have found to my cost before  (see 2 November 2011), engage a barber who has no English at your peril. I hold out some of my longer locks and make scissor actions with my fingers to suggest what length he should cut off, but become more and more anxious as the operation proceeds and the heap of white hair on the floor grows deeper. At one point I gesticulate and call out "No more!", but he shows no mercy, says "No, no!" and knocks my head sideways (his manner is somewhat rough and unsympathetic) to continue the trim. When finished (I give him a big thumbs up to dissuade him from further depredations), he tries to persuade me to let him trim the beard, oil the hair and massage my face with some yellow ointment. Enough. Some 24 hours later, I arrive home in Wymondham. Almost Sara's first words are, "Ooh, I like the haircut!"

I return home via Kuwait and Gatwick. To paraphrase Amitav Ghosh, places don't merely exist, they have to be invented in your imagination. Indians often ask "Do you like my India?" Thus what you've been reading, if you have been, is "my" India. I hope you like it too.

Saturday - The Sun Temple, Konark

Sanctuary (on stone wheels) to left. Building on right was a platform for dance, once roofed.

My final day before starting the trek home. Breakfast late, write yesterday's blog post, check out the little shops down the road and wander on the beach. The hotel manager gives me a complimentary ticket for the first night of the annual Konark Dance Festival, so I book an auto rickshaw for 1.30 to get me there with plenty of time to see the celebrated Sun Temple. It's surprising how long it takes to cover 35 kms., even in a shiny new yellow tuk-tuk, but the road is smooth, following the coastline through a wildlife park ("Deers may cross") and on bridges over a series of pristine estuaries. It reminds me of a well-loved road in Tanzania, lush with tall palms, banana groves and villages with palm thatched mud brick homes.

The Sun Temple is a UNESCO World Heritage Site, voted one of the Seven Wonders of India in a TV poll (!). It's Saturday, and the  heritage lovers are out in force, as busy as a stately home on an Antiques Roadshow day. Inevitably I get roped into several family photos but have stopped reciprocating - my computer has a strict limit on the number of images it can store of me with mama, mama-in-law, baba, babu, uncleji, auntiji and precocious little brats-ji. But I guess I look a bit of a buffoon as I wear my check shorts to feel the breeze on my knobbly knees in the tuk-tuk.

Note giraffe, far right. They must have traded with Africa.

The temple all but defies description. It was conceived by the Eastern Ganga King in about 1250 as a thank offering to Suriya the Sun God who cured him of leprosy. Sadly, it was sacked by Muslims in the 1550s, then buried under mounds of blown sand awaiting rediscovery in 1902. But what remains is spectacular - a 200 ft. central shrine in the form of a giant carriage drawn by stone horses (now lost). The 24 huge stone wheels and axles remain, each serving as a sophisticated sundial at different times of the day and year.  The real genius of the place is in its carvings. Every square inch is covered with delicate carvings ranging in size from miniature to massive. These depict hunting scenes, animals - literally thousands of elephants process round the base, scenes of domestic life, gods and mythological beasts. But mainly human forms - musicians, dancers, lovers - which are at the same time both delicate and decidedly indelicate. The celebrated scenes of eye-popping erotica are surely the largest collection anywhere of medieval stone porn, no holes barred. Look at the next post - if you dare! Rabindranath Tagore, the great Bengali writer, said something like "when words fail, the poetry of stone takes over". One theory is that the monument respresents a state of ultimate bliss - witness the rapture the faces of the less worn figures!

For such an ace place, it's disappointing that no guidebook is available (should I offer my services?), though before entering I am hassled by "government approved" guides offering to show me round, which I resist. Despite the crush of visitors, the site is immaculately kept (no litter) and is devoid of the usual plethora of notices, though I rather like "Do not ascend the embankment" on a grassy slope. Shades of "No picnicking on the greensward" at Frinton-on Sea.

From the temple I amble, Calcutta-style, towards the open-air arena erected for the Konark Dance Festival. I stop at a dhaba en route for a meal of onion bahjies, delicious round doughy things and a couple of sauces, all prepared in a giant wok over a blazing wood fire. Cost र40 (45p). I'm often surprised how rarely local people try to overcharge when they could so easily get away with it. That is the privilege of taxi drivers. The trees along the road to the festival are hung with fairy lights and hundreds of ornate Chinese lanterns, and expectancy is in the air. I show my (free) ticket and go in the V I P entrance but nobody cares, though I later notice that there is also a "V V I P Entrance". I don my long trousers, but feel distictly underdressed in the presence of so many immaculately turned-out Indian dance-lovers.

I have never before seen classical Indian dance, and do not fully understand the gestures and postures. The costumes are very like the 13th. century figures at the temple - the ones who haven't got there kit off, that is - and the movements are graceful and highly stylised, danced to complex twangy music performed live on stage. There are two groups of professional dancers and - nice touch, this - an artist has set up an easel at the side of the stage and works on a painting during the performance. For me, the crowning magnificence is the great floodlit temple in the background, its layers enhanced by light and shadow so it looks like a giant dalek radiating light against the black sky. There are, I estimate, about 2000 people present - not bad for a "high art" show in a one horse town beside the seaside.

I omitted to bring any warm clothing with me and it is decidedly cold on the way back in the rickshaw. I thread my arms through the legs of my check shorts and wear my (dry) bathing shorts on my head so I look like a Howrah Station porter.

Parental advisory: Medieval Porn

One of many variations on this theme

The Joy of Sex set in stone

Roll over, Dr Alex Comfort! What a good job that Calcutta university vice-chancellor (see Friday) didn't live in the 13th century! He would have been horrified by such excesses of nongrami "frozen in luxuriant detail for posterity". It makes a stark contrast to the very buttoned-up attitudes in modern Indian society towards such matters. 

Konark's sculptors favoured a hands-on approach

I wonder what today's family visitors to Konark make of it? Or are they using it as a sort of visual aid for their kids, sanitized by an 800 year time gap? For once, I'm too discreet to ask.

Strong arms & a good sense of balance required

A trifle exaggerated, one assumes

One commentator describes Konark as "The ultimate wet dream of the architectural fraternity."