India - All Image Descriptions

On my way to Australia in 2008 I wanted to see something new as well, so I decided to break the flight in India for about three weeks. I spent another two and a half days in Mumbai on my return from Australia. On a separate page you find a map of my trip through India.

Do you miss the people in my pictures? You'll find plenty of them elsewhere! For example in blog de Eve Marie. She also wrote an entry on a a bike ride with me and two other French travellers.

	Taxi in Mumbai The first morning in India
	Inside the Taxi
	Victoria Terminus On my first taxi ride through Mumbai I already got a good impression of the traffic and the historical buildings. This picture shows “the beating heart of [Mumbai's] railway network” (lonely planet), in 1998 renamed to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus.
	University of Mumbai
	High Court According to the lonely planet the design for this 1848 building was inspired by a German castle... which could be one reason for why I found it strangely familiar.
	Back Bay Picture taken on Marine Dr (Netaji Subhashchandra Bose Rd) after a walk through the Fort area on the search for travel agencies or airline offices (especially Qantas).
	Gandhi Statue
	Oval Maidan This was the seafront when the University of Bombay and the Bombay High Court were build in the 19th century. The streets and buildings on the other side of the maidans are all on reclaimed land (see lonely planet).
	Flora Fountain
	Stone and Trees
	Deutsche Bank Not the best picture... just to show that there even is a German bank in Mumbai.
	Victoria Terminus 2
	Taj Mahal Palace (Car Park) Taj Mahal Palace & Tower: “The plush, heritage-themed rooms in the palace complex [from $US 475] are the ones to go for if you want real decadence.” (lonely planet)
	Street Sleeper I saw quite a few people, especially women, children, and street vendors near their shops, sleep in the street, but I never took pictures of them. Only here I could not resist, because the contrast between this poor guy and the luxury cars could not be more appalling. Unknowingly I already had this fellow's right foot in the previous picture.
	Gateway of India Big, indeed, but not such an impressive building after all. Anyway to me, looking like the tourist that I was, the site was spoiled by way too many obtrusive street vendors (drums, balloons, drugs...) and taxi drivers (“Where do you want to go?”).
	Bombay's Architecture
	Garden View
	Inside CST/ VT Inside the train station an ad I could kiss: I hated it so much, when during my summer Turkish course in Antalya (just before this holiday) the AC (“klima”) was set to 19 degrees Celsius - what an annoyance to freeze in the middle of summer, and what a waste of energy.
	Vines
	Landscape This picture is taken from the train, through the open door (since the windows in the AC3 class were not very clear).
	Panjim in Goa
	Inside a Three Wheeler
	Three Wheeler 2
	Another Beach
	Night Bus There are actual beds in these buses! Only because of that I agreed to travel by bus at night... but the bumpy road still made sleeping impossible for most of the ride.
	Temple Bath This is in Mangalore in the state Karnataka.
	A God Statue
	Milagres Church
	K.S.R.T.C. I continued my journey with an inexpensive but slow bus from the Karnataka State Road Transport Corporation: the 130 km ride from Mangalore to Madikeri cost less than € 4, but took more than 4 hours - mainly because the bus had to climb up more than 1000 meters of altitude.
	Petroleum Truck Being incredibly slow on the steep, narrow, and winding road, this truck with its highly inflammable cargo had to be overtaken by our bus.
	Cows on a Hill One or two cows are tied to a pole, so that the rest of them does not run away, even though nothing else prevents them from going wherever they fancy.
	Rainforest Retreat My days at the Rainforest Retreat felt like a holiday from the India I had experienced the days before: so quiet and clean, with a much colder climate (due to the altitude), and with most Indians I met there having studied at universities, in English.
	Path Through the Plantation The way from my tent to the place where the three daily meals and tea were provided took about 10 minutes.
	Encounter on the Road This bull had apparently cut loose his rope and now walked down the road towards Madikeri, from where I was just walking back to the Rainforest Retreat.
	An Old Grave According to an Indian-Australian friend of mine this probably is a cattle owner's grave.
	Geese From time to time the geese had to be chased away from the meal area.
	Rice Fields The guided tours in the beautiful landscape around the plantation were the one great “activity” available at the retreat. The rest of the day i spent in the hammock, reading my book.
	Fairytale Tree
	Evening Mist
	Driver's Seat
	Bengaluru Bangalore (officially called Bengaluru since 2006) is India's capital of science and technology.
	Vidhana Soudha Certainly an impressive building and worth a picture even in less than ideal light. Notice also the words over the stairs: “Government Work is God's Work.”
	Typical Traffic The traffic in Bangalore (like in Mumbai) is really maddening, if you try to get somewhere by walking. Noise of engines and horns, pollution, and the danger of crossing the broad roads make the situation in Singapore, Melbourne, or Germany's big cities appear comparably harmless.
	3 Storey Man
	Life - a Journey This is in front of the City Train Station, where I went just to make a reservation on the train from Chennai (Madras) to Bengaluru. I had bought the tickets a week before in Mangalore already, but that connection had been booked out. I was told I could five days before the departure date get tickets with a special quota (Tatkal), but also there I only managed to get place one on the waiting list. So in the end I traveled without a reservation... the journey is not always easy.
	MG Road In this picture: Too-big advertisements, Siemens as a tenant of the Bible Society, and construction works in what is to become Bengaluru's Metro rail system.
	Under a Bridge Another picture taken out of a train, this time through the open window of a non-AC carriage.
	Towards the Rain I mainly headed to Mamallapuram to meet travelers again which I had first met in Goa - only on my way I discovered in the lonely planet that the Monsoon ends a lot later on India's east cost than it does on the west.
	Mountain Range
	Monkey 1 Being born in the Year of the Monkey I feel a special connection to our closest relatives in the animal world, and was glad to actually see some of them for the first time outside of zoos.
	Monkey 2 This was in Arakkonam, where I had to change trains to get to Chengalpattu (and ultimately Mamallapuram) without having to go all the way to Chennai first.
	Chengalpattu
	Mamallapuram Beach
	Our Bicycles
	Photo Studio
	Rock Formation The sign in the front says: People are not useless but - they are used less Mamallapuram Town Panchayat
	Room Mate
	Cows on the Beach
	Lighthouse
	The Five Rathas
	Sculptures Everywhere
	Shore Temple
	Fans instead of AC ...that is the way to go to reduce sweating and save energy at the same time!
	Chennai Central
	Holy Trinity Church The Victorian Bangalore Walk starts here.
	Queen Victoria The Queen of the United Kingdom and Empress of India in stone... foreboding my third visit to Victoria.
	Cubbon Park
	Mahathma Gandhi Road
	Dr. Ferdinand Kittel This statue honors the missioner Ferdinand Kittel's works in the preservation of the state Karnataka's language, Kanada. In 1894 the German was the first to provide a Kanada - English dictionary.
	Army Ad What the hell is the army doing on Mahathma Gandhi Road? There could hardly be a bigger contrast to Gandhi's philosophy of Satyagraha.
	Local Trains On my return from Australia I had another short stop-over in Mumbai. Of course I was worried because of the terrorist attacks of November 2008, which devastated many of the places I had been to just weeks before: Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus, the Taj Mahal Hotel, and Leopold Cafe.
	Gas Transport I could frequently see non-motorised means of transport, like the push cart in this picture.
	Crane With an Eye
	Goods Carrier A typical colourful Indian truck.