oliabroad :: Oli on his way from Munich to Hong Kong

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2010-06-04
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Diary - 2009 March (India)

2009-03-10 to 2009-03-30

The Andaman's

The flight to the Andaman's was easy and on time. After arriving you have to register because the islands are part of the restricted areas - whatever that means. You get a permit which you have to carry all the time with you - more or less you really need it even when you go to the loo - crazy system. Maybe the governor here was once in the German Democratic Republic! :-)

When you get out of the airport building you instantly have the same fun with the Rickshaw drivers like on the main land - India does not change here.

At the jetty, where I made first contact with the charming jetty service staff (irony) to get a ticket to Havelock, I met Thomas and Sabine from Vienna Austria. A very nice couple, which I join the first three nights for dinner enjoying some of the best fish dishes of my life - mainly Red Snapper!

The next day I rent a scooter to check out the island - when I asked for a map I got the answer, that the island is so small, I don't need one! :-)

Near an elephant training camp I see four elephants promenading on the beach - what a cool picture! The next morning I visited them in the training camp to see them go swimming - even more exciting!

On day three on Havelock I ran into Julius - he couldn't stand Chennai any longer and decided to come more early to Havelock! The next days we had a lot of fun body surfing, eating delicious food in an Italian restaurant - the best on the island, having fun at some club-nights and chilling with some beers in the evenings. Life is so easy here!

Day five brings my old mate Micha and we have a very good reunion, but just a short one.

As I told my friend Wolfgang (the Monk) I will pick him up from the airport, wherever he comes to see me, I have taken a ferry back to Port Blair a day earlier, because he arrives at 6:30 in the morning.

I told Monk to better bring less than to much things to the island, but when he appeared just with a small rucksack I am impressed. Well he quickly told me, that the stupid airline lost it somewhere on the flight from Brussels to Chennai and that it should arrive the next day, same time - what a start. It's also a waste of time we thought, because in Port Blair nothing really interesting could be done.

Monk is quite shocked how I treated the rickshaw drivers but soon he would understand! :-) We made the best out of the day and drove to the best beach of Port Blair (which is quite bad), where we had to wait about four hours to be able to buy a welcome beer! The beach was not really impressive and the sun to hot so we decided to check out the other sights on the island. The former state prison was worth a small detour. We made our day by choosing the right restaurant in the evening, where we ate our best tiger prawns ever. We ordered so much food that a whole family could had been sated! :-)

Next day started in the same way as the last - getting up at 5:30 am to be at the airport right on time to pick up the suitcase. Well, this was the first encounter with the EHP (Erwartungshaltungsproblem - the problem with expectations). In India you should keep expectations low, because nothing will be like you think it will be. So - of course - the suitcase did not arrive! They told us it will come with the next flight at noon. Which means we miss the first two ferries and waste a complete day on the beach. Perfect start!

Well, we made the best out of it buying souvenirs for Monk and checking out the forest museum in the sawing mill. The museum was quite boring, but within the sawing mill there was no security so we could walk freely around and check out every spot including the belt saw running with 150 km/h around a 10m way - we were already planning the new James Bond movie in here! :-)

The suitcase arrived in the afternoon and we could finally buy tickets for the ferry and start the trip to the blessed islands.

While my absence Julius and Micha became good friends and new stars on the drug firmament! :-) The picked up twin girls and we had a very funny day on the beach playing volley ball in the water and enjoying good food in the Italian restaurant. Monk is so impressed that he does not want to try Indian food again! :-)

We soon booked some days diving with Barefoot which brought us delightful days with the funny, nice but professional crew and nice dive spots - well, you cannot compare them with the Maldives or the dream world of Bali. But dive day two we were very lucky when we spot two enormous Manta Rays on the way back and we all jumped into the water with snorkeling gear. Both of the manta rays had a wing span of about 7m!!
20 minutes later on the way home, we saw another two - nobody knows if they were the same or not, but it was just awesome!

As we didn't want just hanging around on beaches we planed a trip to the North including trekking on the Saddle Peak - the highest mountain of the island. Of course we have to buy tickets for the ferry and this developed to be a real pain in the ass. As the Indians don't respect any queue we knew it will be hard work, but how these Andaman people tried to sneak in front of me did nearly end in a fight - I was ready to kill at least ten of them - occupying the moral high ground of course! :-)

The ferry trip was short and ok, but on the next step Monk could learn how Indians lie and cheat in best form. We got persuaded by a jeep driver that we could take the bus to Mayabunder, but then we would not get the bus further to the North where we wanted to go first. So we paid 800 Rps. instead of 100 to be in the next village on time. Well, of course the bus 'was late' and didn't arrive at all in the end. The next day we figured out, that the 4 o' clock bus just does not exist - another perfect lie which keeps you away from trusting any Indian anymore. Which is a shame, because you loose so much, if you see them just as an enemy trying to rip you off.

Well, we stayed in a grotty guesthouse - for monk the worst place he ever slept (but this was his first trip to Asia) - but with good food and we made contact to a German, a Mexican and an American guy. The five of us organized a boat trip to Avis island for the following day which brought us a fantastic island day.
In the afternoon we finally caught the bus to Diglipur (probably the worst city on the Andaman's) to jump directly to Kalipur from where we knew we can start the trek to the Saddle Peak.

We staid in a nice hotel and at 4:30 we got up to have breakfast and met our guide. The tour is just amazing. First we walked about 6 km along beaches and through jungle, then it started ascending and after 5 hours we reached the top. It had quite a good view up there, the weather was hot but we were all in a very good mood. Descending became hard, when my knee started to ache and Monk was a little bit exhausted. But coming back to our hotel it was one of the best days on the Andaman's!

The rest of the day we try to get back to the jetty - which is not always easy in India! :-) - try to get a ferry ticket (which was a hazard, as well) and finally tried to find a restaurant in Diglipur - which was impossible, because they were just too mean!

In the end we managed everything and headed for a hard night on the night ferry lying on the metal floor. Monk couldn't sleep at all - I was already adjusted to less comfort and slept that good, that I didn't realize when a pick pocket stole my mobile phone. Well, after the police who took several things from my car in Bombay that was the second time within 8 month - I think, that's OK! :-)

When we arrived back in Port Blair at 5:30h in the morning it was impossible for us to catch a ferry at 6 - the system on the Andaman's is just a big shit and nobody knows, what to do and you get the impression they wanna keep it like that - little kings in their stupid booth selling tickets for Euro 3,-! :-)

The last highlight we planned to do was diving with an elephant. So another day started at 4:30 in the morning, driving to the diving school, get into the equipment and wait in the water for the elephant to come and to decide if he would like to swim this day or not. Well, after one hour in the water and three attempts of the machud (the elephant trainer) to motivate him to go swim we gave up! In the water we were joined by a German couple. Ulli who was a layer quickly found out that there were some sights of miss planning - he should become so right! :-)

Next point on the schedule was going diving again. To bring our equipment safely onto the boat the crew decided to bring the boat to the beach. Normally a simple maneuver, but on that spot they forgot that there are high waves - sometimes up to three meters. Good to surf, but not good to load a boat or even handle it in shallow water.

Well, worse came to worse and seconds after all the valuable equipment (camera, iPod) was on boat the first huge wave hit the boat and everything was wet within a second. Including Tina who was in the boat and furthermore she got stuck in the boat. The boat then became a small ball in the game of the big waves more or less disassembling it and producing nice little bullets out of wood parts with nails sticking out shooting through the water.
It took us about an hour to save all the things out of the water, get the boat moving again and be save on the beach licking our wounds! Ulli the lawyer produced more sarcastically jokes - I liked him! :-) With a destroyed camera and my destroyed famous iPod the mood was not the best by then, but with Ulli and Tina we kept moving to do our two dives.
But when worse comes to worse the propeller of the boat get broken which takes time, near to the first dive sport the crew realized that they forgot the weights for diving and when we were in the water my regulator was leaking air - well, finally we did our two dives and when we went home it became dark already! During the nightmare it's always bad but in the aftermath these days are the ones to remember! :-)

We enjoyed another two days relaxing on the beach and eating very good food - including crab, lobster and best yellow fin tuna fish steaks and capaccio - I will never have anything alike in my life!

All in all it was a perfect time with Monk. As the whole life is a saying good-bye, I had to farewell Monk on the airport where he went to Chennai to get back home and me to Kolkata - my last stop in India.

After I had an easy flight back into the city of joy I registered in the same guesthouse as the last time and had soon a re-meeting with Tina - a girl from calcutta rescue which I knew from the last time being here.

With my car still on the way I could not really relax and tried as good as I could to support Andi who was on his mission to pick it up for me in Hamburg and drive it back to Munich. It became a pain in the ass for him when he found out, that he needs a shipper to get it out and another agency which drives the car out of the container and to realize, that the ship did not even arrive! It took him another day away from the office to solve all the problems and starting to drive back to Munich when after about 200 km the petrol filter was blocked and he had to call the ADAC for assistance - lucky me, he is a member and there were no extra costs for that. Against all agreements I had with my Bombay shipper there were more costs to get the car out of the port from Germany of about Euro 450,-! This is about the money I need for a month to stay in Asia - you just cannot trust any Indian!

Andi did his best and brought my car to Munich without any further incidents - it's so good to be able to rely on good friends! Thank you very much Andi!!

2009-03-04 to 2009-03-10

Hampi

Going to Hampi is my first train journey in India - it's quite a good experience but of course the splitting with my car still hurts - anyway, changes are always good! Despite I had quite a good bed in the two-tier AC compartment, I couldn't sleep the whole night and after taking the second train to my final destination I am pretty exhausted.

After quickly checking in into a nice guesthouse I thought I deserve a quite, chilly beer and some snacks. But ignoring the fact, that Hampi is a 'holy' city I couldn’t find a bar and started asking everybody on the street for directions. Doing so I ran into Julius and Maya, who just gave up on the search for a drink! :-) On my way back to my guesthouse I give it a last shot and ask another man on the street who tells me, I could take a rickshaw to the next village where a bar is still open. With nothing else on my mind I took it and accidentally ran into Julius and Maya again who are very fast persuaded to join me.

Julius and me were quickly on the same page and decided to rent a scooter the next day to explore the area. We had big fun driving around, going climbing, sight seeing and in the end of the day found the perfect place to chill out - a river like a bath tube! We stayed there about three hours in the water and were enjoying the good sides of the life!

Two days later Julius and me left Hampi heading to Bangalore. I read an article about the city in a journal and it sounded splendid and I wanted to go there anyway because it is considered to be the IT-capital of India. Julius wanted to check it out as well, so plans were quickly arranged to keep united.

We decided to take the sleeper class in the train to Bangalore to catch the right feeling of being a back packer. AC is just for the posh folks!

When we entered the train and found our places we found two Indians sitting there and we were very surprised with their reaction when we told them about our reservation. They simply ask us in a manner just Indians do know to please stand for the next two hours because then they will get out of the train anyway! Back home in Germany I would have laughed about such a good joke, but we fast figured out that they were not funny at all and had to hard core argue to make them go away! :-)

Later we figured out, that the beds are so small, that we could not sleep in there anyway, so we ended up upgrading our tickets again to AC class and spend the night in a convenient bed! :-)

Bangalore was a big disappointment! The air was very bad and the sights were the same! As we did arrive at about 6:30 in the morning we were ready with sight seeing in the afternoon and it took us a second to come to the decision together to leave Bangalore the next day - by plane, as it was so cheap! Just Euro 15,- to go to Chennai - the hub for the Andaman's!

There was one more thing to do on the day - or in the night! Footy was on! The champions league eight-finals with Bayern Munich still on the run. We were lucky to find the best food in town - a gourmet supermarket - to prepare a nice picnic during the games. Well, it became 1:15 in the night when we finally gave up and thought the games were transmitted in a channel we couldn't receive. It took us another half an hour the next day reading the newspaper over a cup of coffee to figure out that since four days we were living on the wrong day - we tried to watch the game one day too early! :-)

2009-02-14 to 2009-03-04

Bombay

Bombay again. This time it had two sides: First I had to organize the shipping of my car back to Germany. The second was the 'spare time' with Pryia and Arjun, who I knew from Goa.

Mike and Anne-Christine recommended Ali a shipper in Bombay to handle the shipping. It started all very good, but in the end I had to figure out that he ripped me over. Telling him from the first day on, that I want a price including everything, Customs on both sides, shipping, loading, unloading, fucking everything, I had to figure out that Andi hat to pay another Euro 460,- to pick up the car in the harbor in Hamburg. I learned my lessons about India!

Organizing friends to take over the car, drive it back to Muc, take things out of the car, sell car, sell stuff, do the official stuff... was easy on one side but hard on the other, because I could not help at all sitting somewhere in India.

Andis offer to pick up the car in Hamburg and drive it to Munich was still valid. Tini, Roman, Olli, Stefan, Timo and Petzi replied quickly to help moving all my personal stuff out of the car in my basement. It's just so good to have good friends!

Meeting Frank the cook was another very good night having fun and spending time with somebody who is exactly on the same wavelength!

The best thing to be in Bombay was definitely to spend time with Priya and Arjun who I knew from the good days in Goa. Not only they offered me to stay in their house, I was also playing table tennis (TT) with Arjun joining the sports club in the center of Bombay including sauna, supermarket and alike - a reminiscence of the British! They showed me the good restaurants and the ways to enjoy the luxury being a part of the upper class in Bombay including staff for the house preparing food and cleaning, going to cinemas, jam sessions, joining Pryia - who is a film producer - on the spot for an add for a refrigerator, etc., etc., etc.... With all my worries about the car, this was the best treatment ever - well, of course it would have been perfect without the worries, as well! Thank you so much for this perfect time with you!!!


	Start: 2008-04-10					Oli on his way from Munich to Hong Kong				End: 2010-05-12