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I arrived in my 4th and final state for this trip. Chennai will be the biggest city I’ll be spending a lot of time in. The first thing I noticed here was public urination by men all over the place. Along side every road, this is what I see. I walked around for an hour or two trying to find a good place to stay. I found a place that wasn’t full for $4/night. It is kind of like a prison cell though.

I noticed it was more humid here when I got off the train. I’ve been very lucky so far in my trip here since I’ve been enjoying low humidity. Looks like I’ll be sweating a lot more these last two weeks.

I decided to go check out the nearby library and museum. I wasn’t planning on going inside the museum until some foreign guy gave me his ticket. The museum was only open for 45 more minutes, but I gave it a try and got in for free. Saved me $5, but I did have to rush through everything. The exhibit I was looking forward to seeing here was closed, however.

For lunch and dinner I ate at a place that served “meals.” When I got inside, they put a big banana leaf on the table instead of a plate. Then they scoop out various vegetables and put it on the leaf. Then you take rice, put it on the leaf, mix it all together with your hand and eat. I was thinking, it doesn’t get more authentic than this place! It is very filling since they will keep giving you more food if you want. And it tasted great too, all for under $1.

For dinner, one guy who works at the restaurant came up to me and asked if he could stay in my home in America. Being friendly, I said ok. Then he asks for the price of the airline ticket and how much he can get paid there so he can send money back to his family. He wants to do housework in my home and he wanted my phone number and address. This is what you ask me after meeting me one minute ago? He was pretty serious, so it was a little uncomfortable.

I did some research and found a cinema I could walk to that showed a movie in English. The movie was Slumdog Millionaire, filmed right here in India. Most of the dialog was in English and some was in Hindi. I can’t say it was a very fun movie to watch since it showed all the very worst parts about this place. It is nominated for Best Picture Academy Award. Only cost $1.50 to see the movie!

Today I waited around for my next train. This time, I bought a ticket for 3AC class. This means there are 3 tiers of berths and air conditioning. Much better than Sleeper class! All the windows were sealed so it was quiet plus it wasn’t crowded. Everyone had their spot. They give you a sheet and you have to put it on your bed yourself. There was also electricity. There was one plug for each set of 8 berths. I realized this was the first time I felt AC in India, it was a little strange. This is the only way to travel in India.

Before the train, I filled up on food. Trying some more of the restaurants around my hotel. One was sort of all you can eat. You get a plate, some rice, and then you can add vegetables and curries as much as you want. You just have to eat it all with your hand.

The 13 hour train left at 7PM and arrived the next morning at 8AM.

I visited the State Library here in the city. Held in an old, dusty building, it looked like half English books and half Indian languages. Most of the books were so old and worn it was hard to see their titles. It was strange when I wanted to read a book that I had to fill out a piece of paper though.

I also paid a visit to Salar Jung Museum, which had a wide variety of art from Europe and Asia. To get inside, there was a security check. One line female, one line male. The male line was about 5x longer.

This city has almost five million people in it, making road crossings frightening. There are very few traffic lights in the city.

There was one more museum I visited: AP State Museum. It was mostly about India and this state and was pretty good. The courtyard had a big wooden chariot.

I also stopped at Lumbini park on the shores of the lake known as Hussain Sagar. After the exhaustive security check which required me to take a photo with my camera to prove it was a camera, it was a really unimpressive place.

I caught a public bus back. This is my first time trying the public city buses in India. I figured out there is a front door and seats for women and a rear door and seats for men. In the back it gets very crowded. There is no door on the buses, so people are jumping on and off and trying to squeeze inside. It was so tight, I began to think if someone wanted to pick my pocket, this would be a good time. But I was prepared, I took out my ID cards and almost all my money before using any buses in this city. Nothing like that happened anyway.

This is the third state I have visited inside India. And another new language and written script: Telugu. However, in this city I’ve noticed almost every sign is written in English, even on the buses. Very helpful!

I was thinking of taking a tour of a place called Nagarjunakonda, located on an island in the middle of a lake. There was a bus supposed to leave at 7:30AM. But the day before I saw pictures and it didn’t look too impressive. Plus the tour price was fairly expensive, so I decided to skip it. Instead I noticed a hotel advertising a breakfast buffet in the city and I haven’t seen that in a long time. For a little over $2, I tried the buffet. Mostly Indian food, but I did get to try something exotic called Corn Flakes.

Also something else I haven’t seen before, an ATM of my bank, ING. My bank is online only in the US and in no other countries have I seen an ATM until here, so I took this chance to use it.

The area I’m staying in is pretty interesting. A lot of narrow streets filled with hotels and restaurants and internet cafes. I tried to use my laptop at these places, but time after time they would reject me. They see me taking out my computer and they kick me out. I think it is illegal for some reason. It took me 6 tries until I could find a place that would let me use my own computer. I really don’t want to use the computers they provide, which can be filled with key loggers, software to spy on you for the police, viruses, and not to mention dirty keyboards.

I woke up at 3:30AM so I could catch my 4:05AM train. When I got to the station, I noticed a lot of people sleeping inside. My ticket was for Sleeper Class. This is the lowest class ticket with berths. One interesting fact is there are no doors on the trains in India, or at least they are always open. As the train arrived, you see people jumping off before it even stops. There were a lot of people getting off the train and a lot getting on. When I found my berth, there was one woman sleeping on it and also one man sitting on it. Luckily, I didn’t plan on sleeping.

It was pretty chaotic once I got on, there were some people sleeping, some people sitting, some people standing. It seemed like there were a lot more people on the train compared to the number of berths. I sat down near where I was supposed to be, but I could not sit up all the way since there was a bed just above me. Luckily, a conductor soon paid a visit and I got to at least sit in my spot. But I had to share my spot with two other people. I was thinking how the cheapest sleeper ticket in China is very orderly, you have to have a ticket to get on the train there and everyone is assigned their spot.

It was cold on this early morning train. The windows aren’t sealed very well, and of course all the doors are open. No sheets or blankets are provided in Sleeper Class. Most Indians didn’t have any, but a few brought some blankets. There are sets of eight beds here. Two rows of beds, three levels high perpendicular to the aisle. Then two levels of beds parallel to the aisle. Mine was on the lower parallel to the aisle. That meant I had to deal with all the people walking back and forth. Most of the trip, I took my shoes off and kept my feet up on the bed.

About half way through  (5 hours later), a lot of people got off the train and it was getting more comfortable. Around noon, a lot of beggars came around to ask for money. Some other people were selling snacks, so I tried some of that. For a while I thought my shoes were stolen, but before I got off the train I found them swept under another seat.

I arrived at Secunderabad station at 3:00PM. It is a suburb or part of the larger city Hyderabad. Out of the station I noticed a lot of lodges. I was glad since I didn’t want to go too far away from the station. Back in the south of India, it wasn’t too hard to find accommodation again.

Today it was roughly a 100km trip to the Ajanta Caves. The bus almost made it there until an accident blocked the road. I waited in the bus, but some other people went out for a look. They came back, grabbed their bags and left. I was only 4km from the caves, so I decided to just walk the rest of the way. I came upon the accident: a truck carrying rolls of sheet metal fell over going around a curve of this mountain road. When I got there, a crane started to move the truck off the road. An Indian walking with me said the driver’s dead body was on the road. I guess he wasn’t wearing a seatbelt.

I finally made it to the caves, which are a little similar to Ellora Caves. These ones have a lot of paintings all over the walls and ceilings. They are all in a horseshoe shaped canyon. Too bad it is the dry season because it looked like there is a nice waterfall here sometimes. These caves were setup a little better. No bats and they had special lighting in most places.

Afterwards, I flagged down a bus for the 100km back to Aurangabad. After going an hour, there was some problem with this bus and everyone was forced off. After nearly an hour wait, everyone had to squeeze on some other buses back to the city. All these problems made it a long day.

A camera note, the flash has started working again. As strange as it stopped working.

Thanks to my Internet connection, I was able to make a lot of travel plans. First, I checked the status of my wait-listed train ticket. I got on the list at number five. Now only 20 hours before departure, I got to number four. It didn’t look good, so I went to the train station and canceled the ticket and got a refund.

I was checking online and most of the trains are full for one month from now. I read there are a few seats kept aside for foreigners, but still it seems difficult to use this train system.

I also canceled the second ticket I bought. If I couldn’t make it to this next city, there is no use to have the onward ticket. Plus I noticed the ticket said 27-2-2009, not 27-1-2009. I ended up canceling two tickets and buying two new tickets today. You have to fill out a form for each refund or purchase. I got a little angry when the lady wouldn’t accept my form in pencil after standing in line for 30 minutes. I ripped the form in half, left the line and started over again.

All this paperwork slows everything down. In a Chinese ticket office, there are many more people than here, but the line moves faster. In China there is no papers, you just say the destination and pay.

I have my airline tickets booked too, thanks to the wireless signal. I have my computer placed on a bucket, next to a open window to barely get a connection. I found out there isn’t 24 hour per day electricity in all of India. Here the power is off for 3 hours during the day at least.

I have updated my map.

Today I got to see the number one place I wanted to visit in India: Ellora Caves. An interesting hillside of 34 artificial Jain, Hindu, and Buddhist caves. Some had two stories, some had three. Some were huge with maybe 50 columns holding rooms up. Most carved out walls of bigger than life size deities. In some rooms you can see traces of plaster that covered walls and ceilings filled with paintings.

Some were carved from the top down, creating a building out of essentially one stone. The biggest monolithic stone temple in the world is here too. I couldn’t find any numbers, but it looks about 100 feet tall. The sign said it took over 200 years to cut.

It took about five hours to walk to all the caves and explore them all. I could hear and smell bats in many. One person pointed his flashlight up and I saw hundreds of bats on the ceiling of one cave.

After a long walk to the bus station, it was another 5 hour bus ride to Aurangabad. The road and bus were not in good shape. I had a book, but the shaking was so violent, I couldn’t really read. I tried listening to music too, but it was hard to hear anything with the rattling of the windows next to me.

On the way, the bus passed a strange hill which had a ring around it, like a collar. I read in my book that this is the fortress of Daulatabad. It looks like something right out of the Lord of the Rings. There is a 5km wall surrounding the hill, then a shaved off portion of the hill that looks like a ring, then many levels going up the hill to the top.

Finally made it to the city of Aurangabad. I went to the recommended hotel again and it was full. This seems to be a pattern in Maharashtra, every city so far I’ve encountered many full hotels. I checked a hostel dormitory room (the only hostel I’ve seen in the country) and when I didn’t see any electrical plugs next to the 10 beds in the room, I passed.

I did find a hotel room for $8/night. I was going to go out to a cyber cafe, but decided to check for Wi-fi before heading out. I was amazed to find a signal! This hasn’t happened anywhere else in the country. It was weak, so I had to open my window, put the computer on a bucket and in a certain spot I could get it to work good enough.

I took an auto rickshaw to the bus station. The driver asked for 100 rupees and I asked for the meter. I refused to go unless he started the meter and we did go. Final price: 50 rupees. Gives you a good idea how much drivers try to cheat you when not using a meter.

Bus tickets in Karnataka were really nice. After boarding the bus, the conductor goes around and you tell him where you are going, he would type something into his handheld device, it would print out a receipt showing the from and to cities in the local language and English, plus the distance and the price. Here in Maharashtra, they just punch a few meaningless holes into a piece of paper and give it to you.

After five hours, my next stop was Nasik. After trying the first hotel suggestion in the book (it was full), I found a pretty nice hotel nearby. Later I went out for a walk and you could tell this was an old city, a lot of old buildings on the streets and it looked a bit like Europe.

A group of students got interested in me and started following me around. Everyone was asking my name, asking for a photo, getting into the camera. Later, a student taller than me didn’t say a word, but grabbed onto my camera lens and started pulling on it. I was trying to figure out why he’s doing this. I manage to get his fingers off my camera and walk away and he pulls the handle on my backpack. I keep walking, more and more students are gathering, I seem to be walking near the entrance of a school. I feel my backpack getting pulled back again by the big student who is following me. He seems to be a bully and was getting me angry. I was thinking am I in high school again having to deal with these things? I wasn’t, so I next time he grabbed by backpack, I pushed him back into the crowd of students. Then he pushed me into a car. I was thinking, wow, I’m getting into a real fight on the streets of India. Finally this was the real India I was expecting! After another push by me, people were joining into stop him and I managed to walk away.

I didn’t really do too much more this day. Just went to my hotel and prepared for another long trip tomorrow.