India 2008

My arrival in India was through Mum­bai, like for so many other Europeans even centuries before. Unlike the British colonists in the 19th century the trip from Europe to India only took one day for me, coming by plane via Sharjah from Istanbul. Diffi­cult­ies with pur­chasing a flight ticket for my in­ten­ded onward flight to Melb­ourne caused me to stay in Mumbai for full five days, al­though I would have preferred to earlier get out the noisy, big city with the poluted air. But I did like the massive buil­dings from British colonial times, combined with the tropical climate and the corres­pon­ding plants. Besides the delay allowed me to be an extra in a Bolly­wood pro­duc­tion. On the train to Goa I met two French travellers. We spent two days there, then continued our jour­ney down the coast to Mangalore, where we parted. They took a train all the way down the coast to Kerala on that same day, while I explored Karna­taka inland with a shorter trip towards the Rain­forest Re­treat. That was near Madikeri, which in turn is not far from Mysore. After­wards I headed to Ma­malla­pu­ram, where the French and I wanted to meet again. From Bengaluru I got there by train via Arakko­nam and Chen­gal­pattu, from where I had to hop on a bus again. The train from Arakko­nam was a long distance sleeper train, which, coming from Mumbai, crosses the conti­nent to the east coast, and reaches Na­ger­coil in India’s very south after three days. So I had a reser­vation for a valuable place and thus paid dis­pro­portionate 298 Rupies (close to €5) for this part, while for example the much longer trip from Chen­nai to Ben­ga­lu­ru only cost 136 Rupies. Back in Ben­ga­lu­ru I left India from there, on a plane to Sin­ga­pore. But already on my retur flight from Mel­bourne to Eu­rope in De­cem­ber I had another short stop-over in Mum­bai.