We started our journey south by train from the city of Hospet on the evening of 27th Jan. We had booked train tickets via travel agency, which are in every street corner in most cities (check commission before booking), and managed to get AC3 class to a sleeper wagon. It pays to book well in advance so you may get better and cheaper seats, prepare to book atleast 2-3 days in advance if you wish to travel at all by train. Otherwise you may need to settle for a bus or to a class with rock hard seats... Good tips for train travel in India can be found at A beginner's guide to train travel in India
Our wagon had 3 bunks on top of each other and another 3 opposite, and another 2 on the other side of the corridor. Bunks were quite comfortable altough way too short even for me who's only 174cm tall.Clean sheets and blankets were provided by Indian Railways.
I actually slept couple of hours, as the wagon was filled with business folk who all went to bed around 10PM, and arrived to Bengaluru reasonably fresh at 7AM.
I had booked a room from an Indian business hotel, Golden Residency for 1200Rs/night, so we were expecting to get a high-class hotel:) Indeed we had warm water, soap, wifi and roomservice breakfast. We never managed to get what we ordered from the roomservice, but it was included in the room rate. Also wifi didn't quite work, but hey you cannot ask for everything!
After 3 meatless and beerless days in Hampi we headed to Bengaluru's famous MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road with high hopes to find a non-veg restaurant serving cold beer. As were were in India's beer capital we thought this would be an easy task but we actually found only couple of places and neither of them really inviting.
We had couple of frosties at Ruby Tuesday restaurant and our first Western meal of the trip! What a big mistake. I got terrible stomach cramps which i suffered even the next day. I will stick to Indian diet from now on as it has worked well so far. And if some wise-a says it could have been the beer that made my stomach upset, then I say you don't know me:)
30.1.2011
As I mentioned earlier it is worthwhile to book train tickets in advance. I wish i would have followed my own advice when we took the last tickets for 2nd class day train. Superfast train leaving at 6.15AM to Ernakulam (528km) meant 11h trip on "church bench" with sometimes 4 people on a bench orinally designed for 3 small Indians. Experience was somewhat painful. My back was complitely shot when we arrived to Ernakulam on the afternoon. This means that I might need to recover couple of days on the beach, I reckon.
Our wagon had 3 bunks on top of each other and another 3 opposite, and another 2 on the other side of the corridor. Bunks were quite comfortable altough way too short even for me who's only 174cm tall.Clean sheets and blankets were provided by Indian Railways.
I actually slept couple of hours, as the wagon was filled with business folk who all went to bed around 10PM, and arrived to Bengaluru reasonably fresh at 7AM.
 |
| Travelling light |
I had booked a room from an Indian business hotel, Golden Residency for 1200Rs/night, so we were expecting to get a high-class hotel:) Indeed we had warm water, soap, wifi and roomservice breakfast. We never managed to get what we ordered from the roomservice, but it was included in the room rate. Also wifi didn't quite work, but hey you cannot ask for everything!
After 3 meatless and beerless days in Hampi we headed to Bengaluru's famous MG (Mahatma Gandhi) Road with high hopes to find a non-veg restaurant serving cold beer. As were were in India's beer capital we thought this would be an easy task but we actually found only couple of places and neither of them really inviting.
We had couple of frosties at Ruby Tuesday restaurant and our first Western meal of the trip! What a big mistake. I got terrible stomach cramps which i suffered even the next day. I will stick to Indian diet from now on as it has worked well so far. And if some wise-a says it could have been the beer that made my stomach upset, then I say you don't know me:)
30.1.2011
As I mentioned earlier it is worthwhile to book train tickets in advance. I wish i would have followed my own advice when we took the last tickets for 2nd class day train. Superfast train leaving at 6.15AM to Ernakulam (528km) meant 11h trip on "church bench" with sometimes 4 people on a bench orinally designed for 3 small Indians. Experience was somewhat painful. My back was complitely shot when we arrived to Ernakulam on the afternoon. This means that I might need to recover couple of days on the beach, I reckon.
 |
| All seats are booked by name. You may find the list outside your wagon. |
 |
| Blue fans in a white ceiling. |
No comments:
Post a Comment