Back to the mainland, after two hours of flight across the Bay of Bengal. Back to the chaos and noise of Chennai, the city with too many cars and too few attractions. But I was pleasantly surprised by the neighborhood of Alwarpet with its many trees and quiet side roads. Still an Indian city but…

The islands are connected with sleek private ferries and with “government ferries” that look more like factory ships with a passenger cabin below deck, at 1/10 the cost. Port Blair’s old harbor is mostly silted up so they moved all ferries to a new one further away. It appears that they forgot a few ships…

The island is great for long hikes. The main beaches are busy, but walk a couple hundred meters in any direction and you have the beach all to yourself. There are stalls selling things to visitors. In Europe that would mean bright plastic beach toys, ice cream, and other junk. Here it’s clothes, coconuts, and…

More diving! It’s a long dive boat trip to South Andama Island, to a reef with big fish and a forest of soft white branching corals. There is also a Japanese ship sunk here for the enjoyment of divers. Visibility wasn’t great though at 25m.… Read the rest

Back in civilization, defined as having usable network access. So I’ll post some pictures from the past few days on Neil Island, which is small and beautiful and cut off from the world. Geographical knowledge is not their strong point but everyone is happy and helpful. Some new critters I saw when diving, and I…

What did you do on Christmas? I went scuba diving near Neil Island.… Read the rest

After a couple of long ferry rides I am now on Neil Island, one of the smallest inhabited islands of the archipelago. Part of the point of this trip was escaping the shopping season, and so far it had worked well. But look what the Sea Shell resort, where I am staying for a few…

Ross Island is just 15 minutes by boat from Port Blair. It used to a kind of “Paris” for British colonial officers, so called because it had luxurieslike a rather small pool. I guess none of them had ever been to the actual Paris. An earthquake destroyed all buildings, and nature took over until it…

In 2020 I was in Bangladesh, planning to continue to Calcutta and fly from there to the Andamans, but then someone in China ate a bat or something, a lot of people got sick, and India closed the border. Now it’s 2025 and they let me in. I am in Port Blair, the capital of…

My round trip through Tamil Nadu is ending, and I think I have seen rather enough Hindu temples already. But here are a few more at night where they got creative with ornaments. Is that Rudolph? This is Kanchipuram, a few hours west of Chennai and the end of a nine-hour trip involving a bus…

Thanjavur also has a palace. Lovely courtyard garden, tons of stone god statues (literally), and for some reason a whale skeleton. The most interesting part is getting there through the perpetual construction zone where they are tearing up the walkway while you walk on it. Nobody seems to have an issue with that.… Read the…

Whenever you think you have seen the most magnificent temple of all, India has a bigger one. Brihadishwara Temple in Thanjavur is the third-largest Shiva temple complex in India, and the tallest of all. The walls and pillars are all intricately carved, and everything is in excellent condition. This temple was the heart of the…

Sri Sabhanayagar Temple is one of the most holy Shiva temples. It’s quite enormous, with four ornamental portals and numerous temples and shrines, built with beautiful carved pillars, painted ceilings, and colorful statues. They also have a large lake they call a tank. In the first courtyard was a scary long line of people waiting,…

Gingee is a town one hour by bus west of Pondicherry. It’s more typical of small Indian towns – a loud and chaotic main street, full of honking scooters, shops and stalls along the sides (don’t even look for sidewalks), lots of people going about their business. No Western tourists and no tourist infrastructure beyond…

I have been to India six times and probably a hundred towns, but I think I like Pondicherry best. It’s so quiet, has a beautiful ocean promenade, most streets are narrow and shaded by old trees, there is lots of restored colonial architecture which is much nicer than what passes for architecture in modern times.…

Chennai, aka Madras, has the international airport but Puducherry, aka Pondicherry and three hours south by bus, has the charm. It was once a French colony and the old part on the Indian Ocean shows it. It’s beautifully restored and very clean and relaxed, which more frenetic Indian cities aren’t. Old trees line narrow streets,…

The name Calcutta evokes images of squalor and emaciated servants, living in a giant slum. That might have been the case when the British made Calcutta their capital, but today’s Kolkata is just a huge modern city. A lot of the colonial architecture has survived, and so did the huge park in the center. Much…

Yuksam is the site of the first Kingdom of Sikkim. There isn’t much left though, there is a Buddhist shrine at the site of the throne. It’s very scenic there though – Tibetan temples, lakes, waterfalls, beautiful views of the valleys and mountains and the beehive villages built up steep slopes, narrow winding mountain roads…

When I woke up at dawn in Pelling and opened my eyes, there was the mountain panorama of the Himalayas, dominated by the Kangchenjunga massif. Kangchenjunga is at 8586m India’s highest mountain and the third-highest in the world, only some 250 meters lower than Everest. The mountain views are even moire spectacular at Rabdentse, Sikkim’s…

Across the valley from Gangtok is Rumtek, a small village that is essentially a Tibetan monastery, founded by Tibetan monks exiled by the Chinese cultural revolution. Atypcally, it’s guarded by the army, and entering requires a passport and inner line permit. They have a large beautifully appointed prayer hall, and the monks were sitting in…

The ancient kingdom of Sikkim is now part of India, but requires a special “Inner Line Permit” to enter. Sikkim is a large rectangle, neatly boxed in by West Bengal, Nepal, Tibet, and Bhutan. It’s up in the Himalayas and is essentially all mountains. The culture is entirely Tibetan, except less rustic than Tibet. People…

Back in the Himalayas, this time near Tibet! Darjeeling in West Bengal is another hill station, at 2100 meters, built on the side of a mountain. I can see the 8500m Kanchenjunga mountain from my hotel. The suites in the Dekeling Resort are incredibly comfortable, in 130-year old wooden buildings. During a heavy thunderstorm I…

Varanasi is the most holy Hindu city. It is here where Hindus bathe in the Ganges, and where bodies are cremated in open fires on the Burning Ghats, stairs that lead down into nthe river. Much of Varanasi’s waterfront is a series of ghats, often backed by palaces. Boats go out on the river with…

… Read the rest

Holi is the Hindu spring festival of colors and love. Years ago I have been in India during Holi so I knew what to expect and bought a big white shirt to wear that day. Everybody carries a small plastic bag with brightly colored powder, which they dab on other people’s for heads and cheeks…

…Kühe sind lila.… Read the rest

Here is how to make Indian Puri bread. First you need a restaurant with a kitchen. Form a small ball of dough with wheat, water, salt, and oil. Flatten it and throw it on the inside of your buried tandoor oven, where it will stick to the wall. Pull it out with a long poker…

My hotel in Khajuraho is so much more pleasant than the one in Gwalior! I have a door that leads into their beautiful garden. It’s also only a few minutes from the Western Temple Complex. Khajuraho has 22 temples, all a thousand years old and in almost mint condition. The ornamentation, the multiple bands of…

Between Gwalior and Khajuraho is a small rural village with a huge hulking Fort, at Datia. The entrance leads to a series of big dark caverns and wide stairways and arches, more felt than seen in the darkness. Two floors up it opens to a large square with connecting walkways, in various stages of charming…

The Sun State Hotel in Gwalior is the second-worst hotel in the world. Its business is tip extraction. First the guy who didn’t carry my bag for carrying my bag, then the guy who replaced the unused towel with another unused towel for replacing my towel just after getting to the room. The room has…