The wonderful Mysore is featured in the UK Newspaper, The Guardian. Please check here.
See if you can spot two mentions and a photograph of our very own team.
Tag: South India
Maid in India 5
so, to explain the job. Ok we don’t speak the same language, she’s probably a little worried and intimidated, coming to work for an unknown quantity: foreigner, male, living on his own, can be a bit loud and over-energetic… so of course, I used my well developed training skills. …… and got out the whiteboard, flapped my arms and generally danced around a bit. I seriously wonder what she thought. On many occasions she shown people the photo of my drawings. Promptly followed by sniggers and giggles.
So I wonder what she really thought of working for a Firangi!
Maid in India 3
I arrived at my friend Cariappa’s house to meet the prospective maid.
I have no photos of the meeting. I think the whole thing, for everyone involved was all too intense! We were checking each other out. How weird. Would we get on? How would we know? It’s quite an intimate thing. Inviting someone into your home to cook, clean, and look after things. This was a whole now experience for me. Manjula of course had been here before she had worked as a maid for over ten years for one family, amongst many other things. Me, I was the beginner, the intrepid explorer stepping out into the unknown.
Help!
I’d only supposed to come out to a India for a few months’ pilot. Now I was renting a house, furnishing it, employing a maid. What had happened there… A whole new adventure, in a crazy land and with so many twists and turns…. Whatever next!?
…. if only I’d known!
What would she be like? What did I want and how would I communicate it?
What would she think? (I found out later!) Working for a foreigner would be so different, maybe! It’s worth me remembering I’m from a poor background that’s shifted into the middle class and now living abroad in India. ‘The old poor made good’ which as it turned out, is exactly the path that many in India are taking.
Manjula was quiet, shy, reserved. She’d brought a friend with her for moral support. Good idea! We spoke a few words with Cary and his wife Ganga helping out. I just wanted someone to cook a meal and clean. We then walked round the corner to my house. Things seemed to be going well. They looked around the place, it seemed so big to me. There’s so much to clean but only me, honest! Just the upstairs house with three bedrooms (known locally as a 3BHK) the downstairs house came later. It was sparsely furnished with little on the walls, it’s hard to imagine what it was like ( so, so different now) but then oh no……..we hit a problem….. it was all off ……we’d found the deal breaker..
Wildlife in our garden.
We have beautiful art both natural flora and fauna on our roof terrace and peeking through are images from the painted sides of bullock carts.
The new buds on our Brahma Kamla plants are also coming out. We hope to see them flower over one night in the next two weeks.
want a boy or a girl 2
Remember back in November I relayed Manjula’s discussion with friends about whether they would want a boy or a girl? Its here if you wish to check back.
It was triggered by the pregnancy of one of her friends.
Well, as I mentioned in the postscript, the pregnant woman’s husband subsequently died
Now we’ve just heard even more news of the suffering of this poor woman. Her mother has just died during a visit to her daughter whose baby is due this week. Manjula and her other friends have now gone to console her.
I’ll let you know how things develop but imagine what the poor woman must be going through.
Hampi again
What a lovely place!? everytime I visit (and now twice with Manjula) we discover more and more wonderful dimensions to Hampi.
This time we stayed in the Hampi village rather than crossing over to the island. We love both. We actually stayed two nights/three days and didn’t repeat the main ruins listed below as ‘further away’. We did however repeat our visits to the recommended places to eat, at least twice and called in at Anagundi again.
We travelled on an overnight train from Mysore to Hospet and back (Hanuman flew), journey time 12 hours, we took our own food in a Tiffin. The food supplied on the train on our first visit, a year ago, was not so good in the evening but we were happy to order the Dosa in the morning.
Hampi is of course mostly famous for its ruins of the Vijayanagar Empire from 5-700 years ago (don’t challenge me on the facts, I’m not being a guide now!). It does however have a very special feel to the place. The following suggestions for one days are at slow paces, if you’re being manic you can cover it in half the time BUT Hampi is a relaxing laid back, shanti shanti place! Its now a UNESCO site and has already changed a lot and will do some more but its still fab.
Interestingly the Srirangapatnam Island (12kms form Mysore), location of the famous MyCycle Tours, was also the site of the southern outpost of the Vijayanagar Empire. There are no ruins left of that period but still plenty for a Yorkshireman to bore hundreds of people about!
Here’s a small selection of our photos, more are to be found on flickr here.
Top Tips
Best places to eat:
Sagar Hotel, the ladies offering street food breakfast (on street opposite Mango.) I particularly like the small Dosa balls (what are they called again?)
Mango Tree, (now shifted to Hampi Village) great food.
Please note there is no alcohol in Hampi you have to travel across the river via the ferry to the island (aka Israel) or into Hospet to get any.
Usual places to visit:
One (or half if Vittala is covered in auto) ) day
Virupaksha Temple, main Temple in Hampi, check the lovely Temple Elephant (Lakshmi?) who is bathed in the river early (7.30?) in the morning,
Ganesh. Watch out for getting your feet oily.
Hill above Temple for the sunset (there’s another one for sunrise)
Main Ruins: walkable from Hampi Village:
Vittala Temple, including the Stone Chariot and ‘balance’. Head past the ruins in the first picture where there is a Nandi Bull or retrace your steps 200 metres to walk towards the river for a nice riverside walk to Vittala. The police station where you MUST register is on the left jsut before the first pic ruins.
Main Ruins: Further away
One day
Lotus Mahal, Queen’s Bath, Elephant Stables, Narasimha Statue, Mahanavami Dibba, Underground Temple
can be covered in a day on a cycle or auto rickshaw, combined entry to the sites (is it now 500 Rs?) might mean its also worth doing Vittala as part of the same day but you may need Auto for that.
One day
A trip over to the island (if you’re not staying there) takes a few minutes on the ferry and then scooters are for hire just up the path to use to take you to Anagundi village, the lake and the monkey temple (there is another temple a bit further north on the top of a hill and hard to find but with fab views that could be visited with Krishna tomorrow!)
One day
Even more and different places
Krishna (our Auto driver, one of our friends on Stephen or Manjula’s facebook site, we also have his number) took us to a series of quite different places, some on hill tops with fantastic views, some were key locations in the Ramayana story. Well worth it. Madam (aka Maharanai) takes credit for getting Krishna to take us to these places.
We now have a simple file at Mysore Bed and Breakfast with more details of Hampi, guide books etc.
Farrell Factoid
Ani Samten (of the Tibetan settlement) has just visited us at the BnB. She asks how it is for Manj and I holidaying together and how are we treated by Indians. The fact is we choose our accommodation carefully so that we know and expect people will be more liberal towards a couple from different backgrounds. There is of course a whole back story there, check the blog!
Check for your photo
Our fashion conscious guests go for colour coded clothes. Previous guests of Mysore Bed and Breakfast and MyCycle Tours can now find their photographs by following the link to our flickr albums here Just look for the month when you stayed to find the appropriate album.
We’re off….
We don’t get out much.
We’re off to Hampi for a short break before the big rush sets-in at Mysore Bed and Breakfast.
It’s just an ordinary trip, our second to Hampi in about a year. It is however, a bit of an adventure. The NEW escalator, at the station, the very first in Mysore, outside the shopping Malls, is actually working. Hooray!! Yes my life is so mundane, the working escalator is a highlight!
When it first opened people fell off it, not knowing how it worked so they appointed guardians to help people work it out. All seems to be hunky dory today. Manjula, for one is sooooo experienced at this.
We’re on platform three for the overnight sleeper train to Hospet. At the door of our coach a couple of young foreign women were reading the list of passengers posted on the outside and exclaiming in English in load squeaky voices that there are lots of men in the 50’s due to travel on the train. What about me I’m 59? It’s seems I was acceptable as they were concerned about travelling with Indian men. I have No comment!
Manjula made some supper. Wonderful!
The sleep and journey was pretty uneventful except Manjula says for the snoring, phone ringing and loud voices of the INDIAN men in their 50’s.
Then she breaks out laughing at the people having a poo beside the rail track. Well coffee has arrived so all is good with the world.
My beef is that nobody seems to have a volume control. Says the quiet, reserved Yorkshireman!
So it’s now 6.30 am and we’ve just stopped at the station which we think is the one before ours.
CRASH BANG… what the hell! The curtain and its rail for ours and the next section falls to the floor. A man burst in between Manjula and I to reach through to yank the emergency cord. He definitely looked as if he might have been in his 50’s
Well guess what? He’d only missed his stop, no real emergency and you know that in India, things sort of work out, in the end, well the emergency stop cord didn’t stop the train, so we weren’t stuck explaining why our emergency stop cord had been pulled! Then again, don’t rely on it in an emergency folks.
but rest assured there is a socket to recharge smart phones, laptops etc. Priorities are sorted.
I’m getting a bit slow with the camera, so you’ll have to imagine…the next one.
We’ve just passed a simple old station, stencil painted on the buildings that are no longer used, instead of the usual word: ABANDONED it said ABUNDANT. Classic!
Hampi madness here we come!
Manjula’s Crazy Year
we’re looking back on what has been a momentous year for Manjula.
If only for the lots of holidays in India: Kerala three times (twice to Kannur Beach House), Hampi and lots of local day trips. Sorting out her inconsistent IDs, getting her Passport, submitting tax returns, obtaining a visa for the UK and the BIGGY her first trip outside the country.
Now she’s just signed the documents to become a Director of MyCycle Tours and Travels Private Limited.
She reckons that coming to work for me (yes she did actually work for me, originally) and this house has been really lucky
So what next? watch this space.
village life, visiting family
Extraordinary ordinary
Manjula’s brother Raju, and his wife Deepu, daughters, Amrutha and Hamsa live in a small village of 290 people with around a 100 houses. Its 3 hours away from Mysore. It isn’t a quaint picture book village, even by Indian standards. It’s people are very poor. They do however have great character.
God only knows what they think of us arriving in a car, having driven here just for the day. At one point Manjula points out that the other villagers (not her family) will be shocked as she sits in my presence, they think I’m her boss ;-). Imagine how her life has changed.
The family always look forward to Manjula’s visits and this time, especially so, as it’s the first since the BIG trip to the UK.
At their house, the only door leads into the ‘hall’ which is maybe 9 metres square, in which there’s a couple of plastic chairs (probably borrowed for the guests to sit on) TV (gift from us) cabinet holding absolutely all their worldly goods, it’s where all the family sleep, eat and the copper/fireplace for heating the water is in the corner where there’s also space for bathing. The only other room at the back, is where Deepu cooks on a stove.
Well, of course they had to look at the holiday snapshots!… whatever the culture, its a friend/family obligation 😉 to have to sit through the photos. With pain there is gain!!! …. The rewards from the DIG trip are presents of clothing (suitably labelled ENGLAND and LONDON), perfume, soap and English sweets: chocolates, sherbert liquorice, the ones that go pop in the mouth, were clearly a big favourite. Discreetly Manjula placed some money next to the Goddess Lakshmi.
It’s a poor village and most people are related in one way or another, they are all from the same caste. They are mainly farmers. The odd person, such as Raju, works in construction. They do however have two small schools and children once they reach age 11 will go to school, at the next village.
So what’s this?
Growing ginger…I’ve never seen it growing before and together with sweet corn, potatoes, Ragi, and the ubiquitous coconut, in the dark rich looking soil, it seems to show that this is a very fertile area.
We take a walk around the village. Most houses are similar, just one or two small rooms. We nip through the fields to visit Deepu’s uncles. They have a larger house but it has had two families living there.
They seem to be completely off the network of canals so, they irrigate from rainwater and borewell. I have seen one toilet (the very basic toilet that’s supported by govt funds) while walking around, so I assume that everyone otherwise uses the fields.
Here’s Manjula using one of our established signals. She had just been for a no1. I know, I know, too much detail, so here’s a bit more. I’m now sitting here back at the family house. I’m stuffed. We’ve had rice (two types) a selection of fried bhaji, (carnivores had some chicken) all followed by Keer, and helped down with generous glasses of Lilt (lemonade). I’m wondering if I’ll manage the journey back before I need the loo. I’ve already used the bushes!
Electricity is maybe three hours max during the day and most of the evening, sometimes. It really brings it home to me, how materially rich we are and what a different life we lead! Its been a great trip and so nice to see the family happy to be together.
I’m now very aware that we should be sharing more and wonder what it is they really need.
Farrell Factoid
There is a massive shift of the population from rural to urban areas. Raju’s wives uncles had three children and two have moved to the cities. It’s not surprising when people are so poor and they can earn maybe three or four times the usual rate, in work that’s more regular, if they shift to the city. If they are lucky to get a thorough education they’ll definitely move.
We have a variety of signals. (see no 1 above) Another, is used (in other contexts) to signify glass half-full or empty, is used when we meet someone who’s a bit negative, a Marvin the Robot or Eeyore type or alternatively a very positive and optimistic person.
Postscript
As I’ve said, it is a very poor village but it’s still important to respect one’s Gods and build Temples. The last picture is a relief copied from the Temple they are replacing! Manjula says it’s not to go on facebook so it’s hidden at the back here. This can’t be such a surprise, after all its in the country that gave us the Kama Sutra.
Me and MYCycle 