McLeod Ganj was named after a British Lieutenant Governor, while the suffix Ganj is a common Hindi word for “neighbourhood”. Here the Tibetan refugees have created a “little Tibet” in the cool mountain ranges of McLeod building Tibetan schools, shops, restaurants, hotels and Buddhist temples aiming to keep the Tibetan culture alive and of course to make a living in their host country of India. Monks wearing their crimson red robes were a frequent site around this town.

Our hotel, the Chonor House, is part of the Norbulingka Institute, and our beautiful room was decorated with mural wall paintings from the artisan students. The hotel was located just down the hill from the Dalai Lama residence and temple complex (unfortunately he was away in South India during the time of our visit). Also nearby is the wonderful little Tibet Museum which moved us in telling its historical story of the ongoing struggle of Tibet and its people. 

We spent a day visiting the Norbulingka Institute, which is dedicated to the teaching and preservation of the Tibetan language and the traditional arts. Artists are painstakingly trained in the Tibetan skills of painting, sculpting, metalworking, woodworking, embroidery and weaving.

It’s no coincidence McLeod reminds us so much of the beginning of our trip where we started in Bhutan, because historically Tibet and Bhutan had been one country and culture with Buddhism brought there from India in the 8th century. It feels like we did a full circle and it’s fitting that we now depart McLeod Ganj to fly back to Delhi to catch our return flight back home to Sydney.

After spending 7 weeks traveling around India, we reflect upon our journey, the sights and sounds of where we have travelled and what experiences that will forever linger in our hearts and minds — this country has touched and affected us in countless ways. India is place of deep tradition, history, culture, beauty and diversity. This colourful and interesting country has definitely gotten “under our skin”.

Incredible India indeed!

Upon entering the temple, you have to remove your shoes and walk through the footbaths. This is for respect and purity of the holy shrine but we found that walking barefoot on the cool white marble floors across the huge temple complex provided a more meaningful and connected experience. Over the 3 days in Amritsar, we visited the temple a number of times in order to see it in different light conditions (sunrise, noon, sunset, night, etc.). Dawn and dusk were particularly beautiful and peaceful to us.

Sikhism is one of the more universal religions where all people regardless of race, religion, creed or colour are welcome to visit the temple and fully participate in all rituals. We take the opportunity to see this openness of all others first hand and sit down cross-legged on the ground and share an afternoon meal with thousands of fellow pilgrims at the temple’s free kitchen (donations are welcome).

An interesting and worthwhile side trip from Amritsar is a short taxi ride to the Pakistan/India border town of Wagah to watch the daily border closing ceremony at around 5 pm. We sat in the spectator stands with a few other hundred Indians and tourists (on the India side of course) while the two country’s soldiers performed marching, chanting, and intimidation tactics before they finally lowered their country flags, shook hands quickly and locked the border gates for the night. The India side was particular festive (in colourful Bollywood style) with music blaring, spectators dancing, singing national songs and waving their beloved country flag.

First on our list is the Gateway of India monument located on the waterfront. The Gateway of India was built to commemorate the visit of King George V and Queen Mary to Bombay in December 1911. Before that, the area was a crude jetty used by fisher folks and was later renovated and used as a landing place for British governors and other distinguished personages. In earlier times, the Gateway was the monument that visitors arriving by boat would have first seen in the city of Bombay.

Next we walk to the nearby Taj Mahal Palace Hotel, one of the world’s top hotels and even more famous since the 2008 terrorist attacks. After major security checks, we hang out in the opulent lobby with atrium water wall and stroll through the halls and shops and into the beautiful garden pool area. Not ready to leave, we decide to dine at the daytime cafe, opting only for the salad and dessert bar, but even this costs far more than any of our full meals on the trip. But we have to admit, it was quite tasty.

With full tummies, we venture onwards to explore the street life, architectural sites and poke around the bazaar shops. We just happen to be visiting on “Navy Day” and catch the Navy soldiers and band marching by.

Lastly we make our way up to Chhatrapati Shivaji Terminus (formerly called Victoria Terminus) for some bustling people activity in the busiest railway station in India. The landmark is a UNESCO World Heritage Site and historic railway station in Mumbai, built in honour of the Queen and Empress Victoria; it was opened on the date of her Golden Jubilee in 1887.

The Portuguese brought Catholicism to this region of India, in fact, the world famous Portuguese explorer, Vasco de Gama, died in this city on Dec. 24, 1524 and was once buried in the St. Francis Catholic Church here (his remains were later moved to Portugal). Gama was important for opening up trade routes between Europe and India. Interestingly, not only does Kerala have a large Catholic community, it also has a successful long-running Communist state government. In the Kerala cities, you often see Communist Party India (CPI) ads with Lenin and Marx sandwiched next to Catholic church ad posters with Jesus and the cross.

Fort Cochin is probably most known for its pre-colonial Chinese Fishing Nets, which are most photogenic during sunset. Thought to be introduced by Chinese traders in early 14^th century, these structures comprise wooden beams with an outstretched net suspended over the sea and large stones suspended from ropes as counterweights at the other end. The fishermen walk up and down the beam to lower and raise the net in the water. With their extremely simple and almost graceful design, we found the nets to be quite a contrast to the modern 21^st century shipping industry cranes sitting directly across the harbour.

No visit to Fort Cochin is complete without seeing a Kathakali performance, the Keralan classical dance drama. Kathakali utilizes a combination of the five elements of fine art, including facial expression, dance movement, hand gesture, song and instruments. We found it to be almost as interesting to watch the artists apply their complex makeup (which takes about an hour) before the actual performance begins. The first phase of the makeup is applied by the artists themselves and second phase is applied by fellow artists. We can’t recall which of the 101 Kathakali classical stories was performed that evening, we were more entranced with the eye- and ear-popping visual auditory show.

Quote: “It didn’t matter that the story had begun, because Kathakali discovered long ago that the secret of the Great Stories is that they have no secrets. The Great Stories are the ones you have heard and want to hear again. The ones you can enter anywhere and inhabit comfortably. They don’t deceive you with thrills and trick endings.” from the book: “The God of Small Things” by Arundhati Roy. (Highly recommended read for travellers to Kerala.)

We stayed 5 nights in Kumarakom at the Kodianthara Heritage House (see our Trip Advisor review here), built in the traditional Kerala style with dark carved woodwork and lots of interesting details.

The house is surrounded by a rubber tree plantation where the rubber sap is extracted from the trees to make latex rubber. It was an interesting process to learn and watch it being done in phases. The rubber trees would be ‘tapped’, that is, an incision made into the bark of the tree and the sticky, milk coloured latex sap collected and refined into a usable rubber. The finished natural latex rubber was hanging out to dry in the garden.

The backwaters of Kerala are an amazing network of interspersed waterways and canals of the Meenachil river that are shrouded by a lush green canopy of trees and plants. We really enjoyed exploring the backwaters by canoe, a quiet and relaxing way to watch the birds, smell the flowers and see how the locals really “live” along the river. Scenes of women doing their laundry, washing the dishes from the last meal or washing their hair continued to unfold as we would paddle around each bend. It was interesting to see the local men manually extracting gravel, mud or other building materials from the river beds and transporting it on canoes up and down the river. In their daily routines, the local people were friendly and happy — the children would run out of their houses in packs, clustering together to greet us with smiles and giggles.

To explore a bit further on the backwaters, we took an overnight houseboat trip on the St. Crispin and floated in style on the nearby Vembanad Lake. The Kerala houseboats are like big wooden carved canoes (some double-deckers) with many cruiser comforts such as A/C, TV, windows, bathrooms, bedrooms, kitchens, etc.

Hill Station of Munnar

After relaxing on the tropical backwaters, we headed for the hills. We journeyed by taxi to the hill station of Munnar for a short 2-day visit of stunning scenery up in the tea and spice plantations. The 5 hr. winding drive took us up to cool, mist-covered hills at about 1,600 meters in altitude (though the highest plantations are at around 2,700 meters). The “patchwork” effect of the landscape made from the tea plants is very unusual and quite picturesque.

After travelling a month around India we looked forward to kicking back on the beaches of Kerala’s south coast. We took the 7 hr. train from Madurai, arriving at the capital of Kerala state, Trivandrum. Another 30 minute drive south along the coast we settled in at the cosy beach town of Kovalam staying 5 nights at the “Beach Hotel 2” located on Lighthouse Beach  ( See our comments on the hotel here: Beach-Hotel_Tripadvisor-Review ). Kovalam Lighthouse Beach is really great for enjoying both swimming and boogie boarding with just the perfect sized waves. We immediately took to the slower pace, the friendly people and the lush tropical scenery of Kerala.  It really feels (and looks) like a different country altogether down here.

Finally some relaxing beach time….

On our way north leaving Kovalam we had to stop in Trivandrum to gaze at the richest temple in the world, the Sri Padmanabhaswamy temple. Only a few months ago, a court-ordered search of vaults beneath the temple grounds had unearthed gold, jewels and statues worth an estimated $22 billion! Searchers found bags of gold coins, diamonds and other jewels and solid-gold statues.    The discovery has started a lot of questions in the public about how the riches and wealth should be used and who should manage it, much of which is believed to have been deposited at the temple by the royal family of the princely state of Travancore (now part of India). Some of the vaults under the temple have not been opened for nearly 150 years, temple officials have said.   Temples in India often have rich endowments, mainly from donations of gold and cash by pilgrims and wealthy patrons, but the wealth discovered at Sri Padmanabhaswamy dwarfs the known assets of every other Indian temple. Such assets are typically meant to be used by administrators to operate temples and provide services to the poor, but they have often become the subject of heated disputes and controversies. The treasure is heavily guarded and the public is not allowed to view it as of yet. The temple also doesn’t allow non-Hindus to enter so we kept our visit to the outside only and envisioned the treasure sitting below.

After completing our North India circuit, which took us from Rajasthan’s far west end (Jaisalmer) all the way to Varanasi in the North East, we flew to the South Indian state of Tamil Nadu. Madurai is the 3rd largest city in Tamil Nadu, but the oldest and most important to Hindu pilgrims. Similar to Varanasi, it’s one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and was already mentioned by Greek historians around 300 B.C.  Madurai served as the capital of the Pandyan Kingdom and is famous for its temples built by the Pandyan and Nayak kings in the Dravidian style of architecture.

Madurai is built around the spectacular Meenakshi Sundareswar Temple. Concentric rectangular streets surround the temple, symbolising the structure of the cosmos. The entire city is laid out in the shape of a lotus. Some of these rectangular streets are named after months in the Tamil calendar. It is one the few major Hindu temples which is dedicated to a female deity, Meenkashi who is an Avatar(=incarnation) of the Hindu Goddess Parvati – the consort of Shiva (here named as Sundareswarar).

The temple forms the heart and lifeline of the 2500 year old city of Madurai. The complex houses 14 Gopurams (gateway towers) ranging from 45-50m in height, the tallest being the southern tower, 51.9 metres high. The temple is a significant symbol for the Tamil people, and has been mentioned since antiquity in Tamil literature. The temple attracts 15,000 visitors a day and there is an estimated 33,000 sculptures in the temple.

Besides being  one of India’s most prominent Hindu pilgrimage sites, Madurai also has an interesting and well-done Mahatma Gandhi Museum (one of five in India), which we found very worthwhile visiting. It displays many of the original personal artefacts from Gandhi’s life, e.g. his glasses and the blood stained cloth he used on the day he was killed by a religious Hindu fanatic.

We entered the Museum and first walked through”India Fights for Freedom” exhibition which explains the dramatic history of the Freedom Movement.

The “Visual Biography of Gandhiji” contains photos, paintings, sculptures, manuscripts, quotations and copies of many of Gandhiji’s letters. It also contains 124 rare photographs depicting various phases of Mahatma Gandhi’s fight for freedom, justice and truth from his childhood days until being taken to the crematorium.

We left the museum deeply moved by the story and life of Gandhi – what an amazing human that inspired and changed an entire nation, its people and the surrounding world and its leaders. Gandhi’s life and message shaped the world as we know it today. Albert Einstein said it so well, about Gandhi, “Generations to come, it may well be, will scarce believe that such a one as this ever in flesh and blood walked upon this earth.”

The attractive museum building and grounds are really peaceful. We wandered around the gardens and found an excellent little bookshop specialising in Gandhi related literature.

Varanasi, also know as Benares or Kashi, has been on our list for a long time… we planned our India trip so that we could be there during the Dev Deepavali festival. Varanasi is regarded as one of India’s most holy cities by Hindus, Buddhists and Jains. It is one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world and probably the oldest in India.

The Dev Deepavali festival is celebrated on the fifteenth day of Diwali, which is the full moon day in the month of Kartik Purnima. Thousands of Hindu pilgrims from across the nation come to celebrate with amazing festivities and rituals of prayers, flowers, lights, candles and fireworks on the river.

Besides the many rituals performed by priests, most important for the individual pilgrim is to bathe in the Ganges river… but if you look at the river water it is so polluted you can’t believe it. They bathe and also drink the water and fill portable plastic containers to take back home with them.

Watch this video of the ceremony at the Ganges:

And here a short video from a boat ride at night on Ganges during the festival:

But Hindus come not only to Varanasi to celebrate… it is also the most desired place for devout Hindus to die and be cremated. During our 5 days in Varanasi we saw dozens of fresh corpses being carried by men through the narrow streets just on a stretcher inches from us as we walked along or sat in a cafe. They take the dead bodies to special sites at the banks of the Ganges river, called “Burning Ghats’” where the bodies are placed on a large pile of wood and cremated. Many fires burn long into the night and you can see them if you pass by on a boat. The remaining ashes are swept into the river Ganges on the next morning. Yep the same river they bathe and drink water from.

For the evening of the last day of the Diwali festival, the full moon night of Dev Deepavali, we arranged 2 hours on a little row boat, of course at the highest price of the whole year (approx. 10 times higher than normal…but still affordable).  But it was well worth it gliding down the the river to see miles of Ghats lit up by millions of candles and fireworks. Truly “Incredible India” !

We stayed in the old city centre of  Varanasi which is densely populated, so dense that we had to walk narrow lanes to reach our hotel “Ganpati Guesthouse” right at the Ganges shore, i.e. the Meer Ghat. A Ghat is a Hindi word for a building with a series of steps leading down to a holy water. But not only pilgrims use the Ghats to perform ritual bathing, locals use them to wash their laundry or bath their water buffalos…..

After the Diwali celebrations are over, normal live returns to the Ghats of Varanasi, for example water buffalos enjoying the river views… watch the video:

Time for us to move on, our next destination is the far south of India.

In Varanasi we not only learned that Indians take spirituality very seriously but that they also take food very seriously. We couldn’t help but notice the many diverse and creative ways that Indians ensure they eat well during their busy day. Everything from toting their home-cooked savoury meals with them everyday in aluminium containers (called "dabbas") to the maze of food stalls that manage to cook up all sorts of hot fresh foods and drinks. We found that Varanasi’s narrow alleys held many hidden gems for the adventurous foodie to discover, us included! Here are just a few to call out:

Ayyar’s Cafe:

A bit of history is attached to this place as over 60 years ago Ayyar’s was the first restaurant to bring South India food to Varanasi. And we could see why it is still thriving… with a simple menu and surroundings serving delicious food that is a bargain to behold. We went twice for the freshly made very tasty masala dosa (South Indian crepe filled with spiced potatoes and onions) at only 25 Rupees each (that’s about 50 cents).

Then we finished with a coffee cranked out by their vintage espresso machine…it still works!

Blue Lassi Shop:

 

Lassi (yoghurt, curd, ice mix drink) is one of the great inventions of Indian cuisine and many cities have their favourite shops. In Varanasi we found the amazing “Blue Lassi Shop” located in the old city, Kachauri Gali, near Chowk on the way to the Manikarnika burning ghat. Apparently the shop is quite famous with Korean and Japanese travellers and we agree that this is the best Lassi we had in India or anywhere, ever. It looks like a hole in the wall, but is a  third generation business  where customers sit inside the blue painted shop on two small wooden benches, waiting for their freshly prepared special order. Unlike most shops which offer only sweet or plain Lassi, here you can choose from a long list of fruits, chocolate and other specials. We tried three different varieties in our four days and our clear favourite was the Apple Lassi with rose water and shaved Pistachio

Aum Cafe:

This magical little place is tucked down a side street in the Assi Ghat area. Stepping inside the cozy and spotless surroundings we immediately knew it was unique and exactly what our stomachs needed (based on Ayurveda with a tasty and healthy organic menu including fresh baked goodies). We enjoyed chatting with Kailash (the manager) and Shivani (the owner) who have created a wonderful oasis. Sadly we discovered it on our last day in town so couldn’t return for a second visit.

We were often amazed in how creative Indians can be in utilising the tiniest of spaces to establish a food “shop”.