Fly Mordecai, fly!

In three weeks, I spent five nights on buses, two on trains, and managed to push forward through the following itinerary before taking a 30 hour train back up to Kolkata. That list is:

Nasik-Pune-Hyderabad-Hampi-Mysore-Bangalore-Madurai-Rameswaram-Chennai.

It was a pending curiousity that needed to be dealt with god-dammit; after five months ambling around the North.

Nasik (Maharastra)

My destination en-route from Varanasi targeted to ween me off ghat-life and get me as close as I could to Mumbai without having to hit it.

Life in the tank:







Mysore (Karnataka)

Mysore's sparsely distributed population and transportation caught me at first. Ah, ah - Kolkata tricked me once - it's a strike! But in truth, no. Just a quaint historical gem, it.


Like every city in the south after it, Mysore was plastered in cinema bills. Simply: the southern side of cinema = the b-grade side of Bollywood. Hindi's got the upper-hand and the southern states their mini markets.




I intercepted the main heartthrob dressed as a cockroach, hitting his head on the cinema hall.


Cinema. Advertising. Mayhem. All the way to the flower market.

La Flower Marketia:




Nearby was the equally fragrant Mysore Mutton Market;


though it proved not to be goat carcus exclusive.


In Mysore;

I went to the Railway Museum and not to the Maharaja's Palace.


I fell in love with my hotel's neighbouring minaret.


I bought:

a) a plastic wallet with photos of Bollywood stars in its heart inlays
b) passable underwear for India
c) a book entitled "Aids to Scoustsmastership" for twenty rupees (supreme humour, for all its hyperbolic seriousness).

Then Bangalore, yar.


Bangalore (Karnataka)

Pop-talk has it sussed that Bangalore is India IT central.


But beyond MG road (the commercial nucleus of its worldwide status); the Apple store and all its party-partners weren't hanging around so much.

Through the crumbling Muslim quarter: mosques; birds going crazy from the heat of summer.


a market with Infosys umbrellas and vegetables,



cows, autos and bullocks,


worker's keepin' it up


Bollywood posters,


...then a hip street streaming with Cafe Coffee Days and somehow, a Planet M possessing Return to Cookie Mountain. A befuddling inventory error I enthusiastically jumped at, though the rat-chewed copy of Lolita I did not.


I was in Bangalore about eight hours, then it was challo to Tamil Nadu.