Bye Bye Pig City

So ten months, that's a long old time, especially in this crazy country. Demonetisation, smog, earthquakes, weird bites, a teeny-tiny malaria scare, tribulations of a thieving maid and a couple of monkey attacks.

Twenty-six cities across sixteen states. Five hundred kilometres on the prison gym treadmills. Forty-odd novels read (including some biggies). Far, far too many hours of Netflix.

So what will I miss?

The colours. You'll be hard pushed to see someone wearing grey here.

The trees. They are like normal trees, but bonkers.

The curries. It's not just acceptable to eat three curries a day, it's encouraged. Back home if I have two curries in a week I feel decadent.

The Clocktower. My token bit of quasi-normality, quasi-routine - it's sort of an English-themed microbrewery (turns out I am that person). The routine goes like this: get a beer taster, order an American IPA (Clocktower lager for Marius), discuss why we get a beer taster when we order the same thing every time, eat a club sandwich, listen to Mona by Craig McLachlan.

The animals. The squirrel-cum-chipmunks that they do here are adorable and it's still a treat when I see an elephant or a monkey.

The pigs. How can it not bring a smile to your face when you see a particularly dishevelled pig walking down the road. Or sitting in a puddle on a hot day.

So goodbye India, these are your best bits:

Temples:
Best: Sun Temple, Konark
Weirdest: Temple of the Divine Madman, Panaka (yes, yes, I know, but none of the temple-weird that India offered came close. I see your chariot of filth and I raise you two children playing with phallus-a-like human femurs. If you're gonna insist on an Indian weirdest temple then) The Monkey Temple in Jaipur, although the weird was more whatever it was that was going on there, rather than the temple itself.

Lassi:
Tastiest: saffron lassi, Jodhpur
Weirdest: cashew/chocolate/pistachio/glacé cherries/whatever-else-is-around lassi, Konark

City: Varanasi with Jodhpur hot on its heels.

Curries:
Tastiest: anything on the menu, Varangula, Navi Mumbai - this is an interesting cultural case study. A lot of the Brits I know that have been there (correctly) rate it as their favourite Indian curry; all the Indians I know that have been there think it's average.

Weirdest: brain curry, Karims, Old Delhi

Beach: I'm not telling you, I feel I must keep it a secret otherwise you'll only go and spoil it. So go to Puri instead, that needs some visitors.

Food:
Spiciest: Naga chutney, NagaCuisine, Guwahati
Tastiest: Chaat, Kashi Chaat Bhandhar, Varanasi

Animal? Viva Pig City

Introducing the Bandh

So a bandh is a shutdown strike. And a shutdown strike is exactly what it sounds like.

Pondicherry (yes, I know it's Puducherry now, but it just doesn't sound right, does it? It's weird how some cities have taken to the new names and others just haven't) is a former French colony. Streets full of balconies and bougainvillea. A wide seafront promenade. A nice romantic place for a saunter, or if you are going solo then a place to bounce between coffee shops and drink reportedly the best coffee in India.

Or at least it would be if there wasn't the bandh. As it was I spent five hours sweating around the streets before heading back to the "ashram" I was staying in to nap in front of the fan until the strike passed. After bandh o' clock the streets were buzzing and Pondy seemed properly alive, I guess I was just unlucky with timings. Not the first time (Leh, Shimla) and not the last. Not even the last of the weekend...

I was flying out of Chennai (see that one is easy, I never feel the need to say Madras. Is it something to do with how different the name is?), so left Pondy on the early bus to try and see what the Capital of the South was like. The Capital of the South was closed.

I made the mistake of starting on Marina Beach (I say mistake, it was sort of necessity, no one understood my accent for anything else: "Fort St George?" "You want go 'institute'?"). Let's double-down on that, mistake seems unfair, it's a pretty impressive beach. When people talk of good city beaches they don't mention Chennai (Rio, Nice, Tel Aviv, Muscat maybe, but never Chennai - not even Madras). I'd say Marine Beach is bigger than Copacabana and Ipanema combined. And the waves were insane. Proper waves, like you would draw, rather than the little lappy twinkles that you usually get.

By the time I was off the beach Chennai was in siesta mode, so I spent the afternoon looking at the outside of closed temples. With the benefit of hindsight, I should have just sat and watched the waves all day (although I suspect the selfie-with-me requests would have got wearing). Still some of the temple gates were pretty...

Food fact. Curries from Madras are not as hot as Madras curries.

As an aside, I'd just like to say how nice it is to have a pun for the post title. Feels like it's been ages. I was in Powai the other day. There was nearly a post called I've Got The Powai despite me not having anything to say. I'd have had to contrive something out of going to restaurants that sound like they should be in Shoreditch (Fatty Bao, Madeira & Mime, sodabottleopenerwala - well Hoxton) and it being the start of my week-long imperial tour of the colonial Capitals: Bombay, Calcutta, Delhi, Madras - How very imperial...