Mysore to Tranquilandia

Today we drove a little over 200km and saw something of rural India. While we in the West are, or appear to be, horrified by the levels of poverty in India, while visiting there is nothing to be done about it except pay tourist rather than local prices. India is extreme in terms of how wealth sits side by side with poverty. One house might be magnificent, newly built, brightly painted, with large garden walls and big gates, and next to it there are rows upon rows of hovels, where many people live and often also work. As a child I built dens in my garden. My favourites were brick built, with a tin or asbestos roof, and an old curtain for a door, with a fire burning at the entrance cooking potatoes or bacon. Except for the bacon, many of the houses here are like my brick dens.
We passed hundreds of small businesses being run by people living in poverty, many tea shops, places selling plastic drinks (you know, coke and all that), repairing bikes, mending punctures, and so on. There were also many people, particularly men, who just appeared to be sitting doing nothing, a subject I may return to when I am feeling controversial.
We have only been in India for a few days, and the food is very good, but already I am getting cravings for British food. While I have no problems with curry for breakfast, having it three meals a day every day is a little excessive in my humble opinion. In the end every meal, whether meat, fish or veg, is flavoured with the same set of 7 or 8 spices. I managed to get plain scrambled egg on toast this morning. It made me happy. That is not to say I am not enjoying the food here; I am, very much, but in the end I want more variety. My taste buds are too weak to understand the subtleties of flavour that apparently differentiates the various dishes, but not so weak that I cannot declare that roast beef and the trimmings is the best dish in the world.
My rules for Indian driving (previous blog) have not really changed. Yesterday we were in a tuc tuc – sorry Shruti, auto rickshaw – driving around Mysore, so I experienced being one of the buzzing flies I described previously. Unfortunately the driver would not let me have a go. The experience of driving here was similar to driving from Bangalore to Mysore, though often a little more rural, and with a mountain to cross – going down the steep side of the mountain with 27 hairpin bends (yes, they were labelled), at the same time passing as many lorries as possible without being hit by the lorries coming up the hill was, I admit it, great fun and something I could not possibly do in Europe, even in the Mediterranean. It is only day 3 of driving, but I do know to expect the unexpected. Today we were stopped by a policeman. We told him where we were going, he was very friendly, shook my hand and pointed off the road, down a cart track to the river, where we had to drive along a rough track and then takes our chances at fording the river and up a steep hill on the other side. All went well, but I am glad we are in a crossover rather than some little hatchback. We have also extended the list of animals that forced us to stop or detour around them. We already had cattle, oxen, and dogs. Today we added piglets, wild boar (it stood in front of the car as if it had a death wish. Wild boar sausages did run through my mind) and monkeys. We drove through sanctuaries for elephants, tigers and cheetahs, but none emerged. Hunting is now banned in India, and this was illustrated with a picture of a Kalashnikov. I am not sure how effective such a weapon would be against an elephant.

We finally arrived at Tranquilandia, our hotel for the night in the middle of the jungle. This really is an interesting place, but more of that later.