All good things come to an end

Well, my 2 month trip in India is coming to an end. It has been a successful one, and this is definitely partly due to everyone who has contributed to this site in one form or another. I read the posts before I left, during my stay, and will continue to log on once I get back home (because I'm already planning my next trip, obviously!).

Below is a completely subjective and biased evaluation of the places I visited, if anyone is interested. Of course the evaluations are influenced by a vast range of factors, e.g. whether I happened to have diarrhea in the given place or not!

Totally Anonymous
- Bangalore: More like Banga-bore.
- Coimbatore: Coimba-who?

Didn't live up to expectations:
- Mamallapuram: what's all the fuss over the Shore Temple?
- Madurai: Sri Meenakshi, a temple or a spiritual shopping mall? You decide.

Generally positive:
- Mumbai, Chennai: big cities with big city atmospheres.
- Mysore: Nice palace.
- Varkala: Calm during off-season.
- Trivandrum: Something about those red-tiled roofs...
- Trichy: The temples have great ambience.

Cream of the crop:
- Hyderabad: I have no rational reasons for this.
- Ooty: Gotta love those Nilgiri Hills
- Alleppey-Kollam -backwaters: Simply beautiful.
- Kanyakumari: Something very romantic and gripping about the "Land's End".
- Pondicherry: The blatant contrast between the old French areas and the Indian areas is absurd. The ghosts of Sri Aurobindo and the Mother are definitely still around.
- Visakhapatnam: Do people know this place exists? Laid back and lazy. Ok, I was there for academic reasons and met some friends, which made it special for me.

It's basically all down to chance...

May I ask what academic reasons?

"- Madurai: Sri Meenakshi, a temple or a spiritual shopping mall? You decide."

Sniff, sniff, cry cry.

I lived in Madurai for awhile and adored it. What's so great about the city is that it's both - it's a pilgrimage site - come on, that temple is truly fantastic - AND a shopping mall. I wrote a 16-page narrative on that very topic called "The Market Goddess" about the duality of, well, the market and the goddess.

And there is something that is so refreshingly un-Biblical about shopping in a temple. I was tempted to see if I could change money, too.

"- Mumbai, Chennai: big cities with big city atmospheres."

I thought Chennai was a hole and a half (making it a bigger hole).

Nice to hear the trip went well and hope you are completly over the 'diarrhea problem' by now.

Your trip summary is interesting and it illustrates, to some degree, the problem with reading over-enthusiastic guidebooks and even listening to the advice of virtual strangers. Sometimes what appeals about a place is a transient moment -- the people you meet, an extraordinary event, good or foul weather, feeling good/lousy etc. It might not be repeatable for others. I'm not objective about cities, I generally dislike them all (not just in India) so I don't comment much on them unless someone is interested in the quickest, most efficient way out of one, in which case I am rather expert

Some places are of modest interest primarily if you happen to be in the area -- e.g. I would agree that Mamallapuram is not really that special either for the temples or for the feces-littered beach, but personally I'd rather stay there than in Chennai if I was passing by. For me the charm of the south is in the country-side -- the Nilgiris (without Ooty), the backwaters, the national parks and sanctuaries, parts of the coast. Too bad it is so difficult to see the best of the south using public transportation as without your own wheels it's tough to go where you want at your own pace.

Lots of 'food for thought' as you plan your next trip -- hopefully not too far in the future! (I'd be thinking about escaping a Finnish winter, for sure )

m2

What`s wrong with having real winters ? Me thinks you are just secretly envious that you can`t build houses from the rain...

I bet that looks pretty interesting to our friends in the sweltering part of europe right now

I think this pretty much sums it up. That's what I like about travelling - the unexpected. You never know beforehand what it's going to be like, so it's pretty much down to a lot of chance variables, unless one is the type that preplans every last detail. Spontaneity leaves room for both pleasant and unpleasant surprises.

channamasala, for me the Sri Meenakshi just didn't appeal on an emotional level. Sure, the phenomenon of mixing goddesses and commercialism is damn interesting.

cookiemonster, I visited the Department of Psychology at Andhra University [and gave a lecture] and also checked out some research institutes of yoga and Indian philosophy in the city. This is all related to my PhD research.

YEP, the Finnish winter is a real winter - sometimes all too real.

Yeah, I suppose you have to live there for awhile or be very, very interested in Dravidian temple architecture..I loved it though. I used to go every day.

Don't get me wrong, the temple architecture is brilliant. But the ambience just didn't click. I just think the combination of tacky neon signs and old structures don't mix well. A toning down on the neon stuff and the stalls would work miracles.

Ok, this was one of the places where I had a serious bout of Delhi Belly, so I wasn't exactly in the best of moods.
I even had to be evacuated from my hotel room because of a drainage problem... the stench was otherworldly. (The entire floor of the building was cleared.)

But I could definitely give Madurai another chance!

And while I'm on the topic of second chances... When I arrived in Mumbai two months back, I stayed at Bentley's in Colaba. The room was a dump, the windows had been left open for the monsoon rains to moisten the beds, the lighting was dim and I was just feeling blue.

Now that I've returned to Mumbai, I decided to stay at Bentley's again to see what it was like this time around. I got a room from their guest house a block away and it turned out to be completely different from the first one. Bright, clean and spacious, at the same price! (Maybe my time on the road has also somehow changed my perceptions of things?)