Bhubaneswar
Konark
28 Feb 2008
28 Jan 2012
Orissa
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bhubaneswar
Bhubaneshwar has a most unusual characteristic for an Indian city - it feels shy. It has the mildly self-effacing look of a new and carefully planned town: the streets are straight, extremely wide, regularly planted with broad leaf trees. My road has an intriguingly rare feature, a cycle path! Of course most cyclists still use the road, but a few intrepid explorers test the newfangled notion now and then. To add spice, the occasional motorcyclist uses it too. Alongside is an equally rare contiguous footpath.[1] My road includes most of the city's 5* and 4* hotels, so its unusually clean and tidy, the cycle path is unique, and there are no roadside stalls: still straight, wide, tree shaded roads are prevalent throughout town.
The architecture is mostly very new - a lot of it looks as though it's been built out of lego. Unusually for built up areas in India, there is space everywhere. The roads are wide, and houses and shops are set well back, leaving broad walking areas. There are open fields between buildings. Everything seems to be scattered, I found a small enclave of bookshops, but they all sold only reference and academic textbooks: most commendable, and typical of many Indian towns, but not good for poolside reading. Apart from that, there are scattered jewellers, chemists, and food and clothing market stores almost everywhere - but few collective shopping or eating areas. This has the unfortunate side effect that walking distances between any 2 points of interest (shop, restaurant, tourist office, internet cafe) measure well into the several kms, so as I'm already all walked out from Pondicherry and Chennai, I'm taking a lot of rickshaws.
Official statistics (2005) put the population at under a million. Even allowing for some pessimism in the figure (Indian censuses notoriously underestimate local population sizes), Bhubaneswar is still a small city as state capitals go in India, not much more populous than Gangtok, and with much more land. Overall the spacious layout gives a feeling of wealth - even the railway flyover slum has an unencumbered tarmac raod through it and more-or-less solid houses, as well some identifiable empty spaces for recreation. However Orissa is supposed to be one of the poorest states in India. My suspicion is that the wealth here is a symptom suggesting that central government and NGO money which was intended for the country poor has been redirected towards the capital, particularly areas frequented by the state government officials.
Which leads me to another novelty: almost no one here speaks English! Including the police officers and the rickshaw drivers, highly unusual for a major city. Town-schooled children are the best source of translators. I assume that most adults in the city have migrated here since adulthood and have had almost no contact with tourists. Rickshaw drivers also often don't know where almost anything is, including hotels and restaurants, particularly not my hotel and often not my neighbours either. While my Hindi isn't very good, and my Oriya non-existent, I know from listening to conversations that "Hotel", "Ginger", "Hilton", and "Swashti Towers" are actually pronounced the same in the local vernacular. Maybe it was my accent at fault? Ah, it turns out that "Trident" is pronounced "Tree-Dent" (I'm at the Hilton Trident)
There are not many tourist visitors, the majority of foreigners in town work for the oil industry: apparently there are at least two separate companies working rigs off the coast in the Bay of Bengal. Anyhow, they don't use local transport, they have hired cars and don't often stray far from the 5* hotels.
[1] Indian pavements take no prisoners and are frequently interrupted with kerbs which are at toddler scrambling height. I would hate to try and use a wheelchair in this country.
22 Mar 2008
Bhubaneshwar has a most unusual characteristic for an Indian city - it feels shy. It has the mildly self-effacing look of a new and carefully planned town: the streets are straight, extremely wide, regularly planted with broad leaf trees. My road has an intriguingly rare feature, a cycle path! Of course most cyclists still use the road, but a few intrepid explorers test the newfangled notion now and then. To add spice, the occasional motorcyclist uses it too. Alongside is an equally rare contiguous footpath.[1] My road includes most of the city's 5* and 4* hotels, so its unusually clean and tidy, the cycle path is unique, and there are no roadside stalls: still straight, wide, tree shaded roads are prevalent throughout town.
The architecture is mostly very new - a lot of it looks as though it's been built out of lego. Unusually for built up areas in India, there is space everywhere. The roads are wide, and houses and shops are set well back, leaving broad walking areas. There are open fields between buildings. Everything seems to be scattered, I found a small enclave of bookshops, but they all sold only reference and academic textbooks: most commendable, and typical of many Indian towns, but not good for poolside reading. Apart from that, there are scattered jewellers, chemists, and food and clothing market stores almost everywhere - but few collective shopping or eating areas. This has the unfortunate side effect that walking distances between any 2 points of interest (shop, restaurant, tourist office, internet cafe) measure well into the several kms, so as I'm already all walked out from Pondicherry and Chennai, I'm taking a lot of rickshaws.
Official statistics (2005) put the population at under a million. Even allowing for some pessimism in the figure (Indian censuses notoriously underestimate local population sizes), Bhubaneswar is still a small city as state capitals go in India, not much more populous than Gangtok, and with much more land. Overall the spacious layout gives a feeling of wealth - even the railway flyover slum has an unencumbered tarmac raod through it and more-or-less solid houses, as well some identifiable empty spaces for recreation. However Orissa is supposed to be one of the poorest states in India. My suspicion is that the wealth here is a symptom suggesting that central government and NGO money which was intended for the country poor has been redirected towards the capital, particularly areas frequented by the state government officials.
Which leads me to another novelty: almost no one here speaks English! Including the police officers and the rickshaw drivers, highly unusual for a major city. Town-schooled children are the best source of translators. I assume that most adults in the city have migrated here since adulthood and have had almost no contact with tourists. Rickshaw drivers also often don't know where almost anything is, including hotels and restaurants, particularly not my hotel and often not my neighbours either. While my Hindi isn't very good, and my Oriya non-existent, I know from listening to conversations that "Hotel", "Ginger", "Hilton", and "Swashti Towers" are actually pronounced the same in the local vernacular. Maybe it was my accent at fault? Ah, it turns out that "Trident" is pronounced "Tree-Dent" (I'm at the Hilton Trident)
There are not many tourist visitors, the majority of foreigners in town work for the oil industry: apparently there are at least two separate companies working rigs off the coast in the Bay of Bengal. Anyhow, they don't use local transport, they have hired cars and don't often stray far from the 5* hotels.
[1] Indian pavements take no prisoners and are frequently interrupted with kerbs which are at toddler scrambling height. I would hate to try and use a wheelchair in this country.
22 Mar 2008
Train spotters: this one is for you
Train travel is one of the real joys in India, and also a source of some of my most interesting sights and conversations. At Mysore, I saw a commuter train that (unusually) had quite a few children and women on board. The vast majority took the short route to the exit across the tracks, even though some of the more matronly ladies needed a hefty pull up to get back up onto the platform. I can see why there are so many accidents on the lines.
At Chennai, one of the longest queues I have ever seen waited patiently to board the general class carriages. There are no restrictions on tickets sold for general class, and it was very full. The queue stretched past at least half a dozen carriages. It was also mostly well behaved although I suspect this may have been because it was under the control of the railway police. There were a few families, but most of those queueing were working class men, carrying a small precious sports-bag with what could well ahve been all their worldly goods.
Usually, listening to Indian conversations is rather like trying to observe atoms - the presence of a foreign female alters their course. However, my companions in my 1AC carriage to Bhubaneswar (the very best class on Indian railways, my fare was rather more than a typical Indian monthly salary) were sufficiently rich to accept me at face value. To begin with they indulged in some very kind assessments of the lasting benefits of the British Raj, but after a while settled into what I think is probably a more normal Indian conversation in the best Lewis Carroll tradition, with extended debate over philosophical issues such as global warming, bridge building (3 of us had engineering degrees), and the problem of sharing the increasingly isolated islands of wealth with the wider population.
I think of myself as good at interpreting Indian English - I often end up translating for other foreigners, but I struggled with these examples of the very strong local dialect: "I want to siwt down" (not sit down, but "I want to shift [my luggage] down" and "hevelett p'kar" (sounds like a star trek character - actually hewlett packard).
One of the many quirks in the booking system is the "two queue" process. Large station booking offices have a dozen or so ticket windows, one of which (usually #1) you can'ta ctually buy tickets at. This is where you go - or should go - to pick up a blank request form and also if you need to research which train will get you from town A to town P on the 2erd. This can be a long winded conversation, as there are usually a couple fo alternative routes via towns H and O or C and E. Plus the debate about whether you'd rather be waitlisted ont he fast train or definitely seated on a slower one or in a lower class. So often the queue at this counter is quite long.
Once you know the system you can speed things up by hunting up your own train in "Trains at a glance", a cheerful summary of "important stations" which covers most of the places tourists go to.
I have had excellent advice from booking office clerks: they are good at knowing about trains which cross two different tables in "Trains at a glance", and also that if you take a 20 minute taxi ride West as opposed to a 10 minute taxi ride East, you get to a major station with a better choice of fast through trains.
So after a rewarding hour happily plotting my February travels (I replotted them another few times afterwards, but it's always fun to do again, especially when the placenames sound so exotic), and since Chantal hadn't decided where she wanted to go next, we just turned up. It was a very small station, with only one window for both booking and enquiries. I asked the clerk for "Mumbai", and then to be more specific, "a train which arrives in the morning".
I vaguely remembered from previous plotting that both the West Coast Kerala - Mumbai journey and the East coast journeys that I had been looking at for Feb took around a day or so: 24 hours +/- 4. He handed me the ticket and asked me to check: 9am departure, tickets don't show arrival times so I asked: 5am. Sounds good. On an Indian train there isn't much to do in the evening (err... or ever) so everyone goes to bed early once dinner is over, and gets up early too. Typically the passing chai wallahs, ("chaiah - gurum chaiah"), alarm clocks, ablutions (including heavy throat clearing) and mobile calls start around 6ish, so you will be up then. Since I don't linger late in towns after eating, I'm generally on an early routine too. So 5am sounds horrible but is actually only an hour or so early. And much better than arriving late afternoon in a strange city with dark approaching. Oh good.
As a timetable addict, I rechecked the arrival time when I got home: 0853 departure, 0450 arrival. Strangely though, the train is only listed in table 70, a fairly obscure one towards the back where the cross-wise routes (as opposed to mainline) are listed. Ah - that's because the route map shows us going East and then West, rather than directly North. I also look for the longer stops - major cities warrant a 10 or 20 minute pause, which gives you time to nip off the train for a newspaper and a packet of banana chips. Oh yes, here's a familiar name, Guntakal. I haven't been to Guntakal, but it's a station with good mainline expresses and a few minor connections to Hospet, the nearest station to Hampi. Chantal is keen to see Hampi so I have researched it a few times, but not having a major train line means there are quite a few detours involved.
How strange. Guntakal 10am. That doesn't make sense. It's - roughly - 1000km from South Kerala, so we're hardly going to arrive 1 hour after departure. And err... with a 5am arrival... how on earth...?
Oh.
Oh!!
Eeeeek!!!
Our helpful booking clerk failed to mention that this morning arrival is not 20 hours after departure. It's 44 hours later! 2 nights and 2 days! And, having only planned for 1 day in Mumbai, we would have missed the city altogether! Thank goodness I spotted it! Tickets are very changeable in India, so the next morning we rebooked for a more direct train which only took 28 hours.
23 Feb 2008
At Chennai, one of the longest queues I have ever seen waited patiently to board the general class carriages. There are no restrictions on tickets sold for general class, and it was very full. The queue stretched past at least half a dozen carriages. It was also mostly well behaved although I suspect this may have been because it was under the control of the railway police. There were a few families, but most of those queueing were working class men, carrying a small precious sports-bag with what could well ahve been all their worldly goods.
Usually, listening to Indian conversations is rather like trying to observe atoms - the presence of a foreign female alters their course. However, my companions in my 1AC carriage to Bhubaneswar (the very best class on Indian railways, my fare was rather more than a typical Indian monthly salary) were sufficiently rich to accept me at face value. To begin with they indulged in some very kind assessments of the lasting benefits of the British Raj, but after a while settled into what I think is probably a more normal Indian conversation in the best Lewis Carroll tradition, with extended debate over philosophical issues such as global warming, bridge building (3 of us had engineering degrees), and the problem of sharing the increasingly isolated islands of wealth with the wider population.
I think of myself as good at interpreting Indian English - I often end up translating for other foreigners, but I struggled with these examples of the very strong local dialect: "I want to siwt down" (not sit down, but "I want to shift [my luggage] down" and "hevelett p'kar" (sounds like a star trek character - actually hewlett packard).
One of the many quirks in the booking system is the "two queue" process. Large station booking offices have a dozen or so ticket windows, one of which (usually #1) you can'ta ctually buy tickets at. This is where you go - or should go - to pick up a blank request form and also if you need to research which train will get you from town A to town P on the 2erd. This can be a long winded conversation, as there are usually a couple fo alternative routes via towns H and O or C and E. Plus the debate about whether you'd rather be waitlisted ont he fast train or definitely seated on a slower one or in a lower class. So often the queue at this counter is quite long.
Once you know the system you can speed things up by hunting up your own train in "Trains at a glance", a cheerful summary of "important stations" which covers most of the places tourists go to.
I have had excellent advice from booking office clerks: they are good at knowing about trains which cross two different tables in "Trains at a glance", and also that if you take a 20 minute taxi ride West as opposed to a 10 minute taxi ride East, you get to a major station with a better choice of fast through trains.
So after a rewarding hour happily plotting my February travels (I replotted them another few times afterwards, but it's always fun to do again, especially when the placenames sound so exotic), and since Chantal hadn't decided where she wanted to go next, we just turned up. It was a very small station, with only one window for both booking and enquiries. I asked the clerk for "Mumbai", and then to be more specific, "a train which arrives in the morning".
I vaguely remembered from previous plotting that both the West Coast Kerala - Mumbai journey and the East coast journeys that I had been looking at for Feb took around a day or so: 24 hours +/- 4. He handed me the ticket and asked me to check: 9am departure, tickets don't show arrival times so I asked: 5am. Sounds good. On an Indian train there isn't much to do in the evening (err... or ever) so everyone goes to bed early once dinner is over, and gets up early too. Typically the passing chai wallahs, ("chaiah - gurum chaiah"), alarm clocks, ablutions (including heavy throat clearing) and mobile calls start around 6ish, so you will be up then. Since I don't linger late in towns after eating, I'm generally on an early routine too. So 5am sounds horrible but is actually only an hour or so early. And much better than arriving late afternoon in a strange city with dark approaching. Oh good.
As a timetable addict, I rechecked the arrival time when I got home: 0853 departure, 0450 arrival. Strangely though, the train is only listed in table 70, a fairly obscure one towards the back where the cross-wise routes (as opposed to mainline) are listed. Ah - that's because the route map shows us going East and then West, rather than directly North. I also look for the longer stops - major cities warrant a 10 or 20 minute pause, which gives you time to nip off the train for a newspaper and a packet of banana chips. Oh yes, here's a familiar name, Guntakal. I haven't been to Guntakal, but it's a station with good mainline expresses and a few minor connections to Hospet, the nearest station to Hampi. Chantal is keen to see Hampi so I have researched it a few times, but not having a major train line means there are quite a few detours involved.
How strange. Guntakal 10am. That doesn't make sense. It's - roughly - 1000km from South Kerala, so we're hardly going to arrive 1 hour after departure. And err... with a 5am arrival... how on earth...?
Oh.
Oh!!
Eeeeek!!!
Our helpful booking clerk failed to mention that this morning arrival is not 20 hours after departure. It's 44 hours later! 2 nights and 2 days! And, having only planned for 1 day in Mumbai, we would have missed the city altogether! Thank goodness I spotted it! Tickets are very changeable in India, so the next morning we rebooked for a more direct train which only took 28 hours.
23 Feb 2008
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