Sunday, March 20, 2005
Armstrong attendra...
[Difficile de s'arracher de la lecture de "Louie" (Louis Armstrong) d'Alain Gerber pour composer un nouveau blog. Verve puissante, ambiances fascinantes et personnages gargantuesques. Difficile aussi d'imaginer que ca pourrait avoir lieu ici, dommage.]
Back to english. First of all congrats to the french rugby team that made the oval ball sing yesterday against Italy. Ils nous ont fait plaisir! Promissing players...
Afraid to choke in Chennai, and taking some offs before "Ze Big Start", I spent recently a week-end in night trains and busses on the trace of the Mysore maharadjas, Tippu Sultan & the Vijayanagar civilisation in Hampi. Old principles respected : no advance ticket booking, one light back-pack, use you feet as much as possible. I almost regretted the first one as I saw the hudge queues (50+) in front of the ticket counters in Chennai station. Same were for the 3 ticket purchases : First time I escaped via a small counter for ticket modification where it was also possible to buy (a lot a good advisors are running through the place if you listen...) ; second time like a miracle, the queue started to melt as I start to stand there. People were leaving the counter faster than a normal ticket edition takes (cancelled train?). Last time, a guy proposed to get me a ticket, making a substancial margin using his relationship in the station's organisation. At least I avoided the traditional close body contact in the queues here. If you stand 20cm behind the next person, be sure that someone will come and stand there!
Mysore, Karnataka. Quiet city that used to host powerfull maharadjas. Big avenues, classical buidings, crazy stadiumlike palace - with integrated & covered rows of sits on the main facade for a selected but big crowd to witness the army parade (paintings inside give a feeling of its former magnificence, elephants, cows & uniforms), emotional black & white pictures from the 1930s of the last maharadja & his family...and Chamundi hill (1000 steps) with half-way to the temple on the top, the old & second biggest monolythic Shiva's bull, black-shiny thanks to the oil spread on him to avoid cracks in the stone.
30 min by car to the north starts a Tippu Sultan pilgrimage. This historical figure is a symbol of resistance against the british East Indian Company in 18th century (he-he...). On one island on the Cauvery river, 3 places : the ruine of the Sriramgapathna fort (Vauban-style from 17th century, heared French helped...), Tippu's summer residence - a wonderfull 1-storey small palace made in painted teck - in indian-moghol style showing Tippu's victorious battles and a lot of vegetal & animal scenes...
[After Tippu's defeat in 1799, the victorious colonel Welleswey lived there some years before coming back to Europe and participating to battles against Napoleon under his new tittle Lord Wellington (here some contradition between some books and the guide, not clear whether the 2 "Well"'s are one person or just cousins...can anybody help?)]
...and Tippu's mausoleum, a small mosquee with yellow flames on red background inside, reflecting the spirit of Tippu-the-Tiger. After that day, I was swimming in a perfect indian romantic-historical mood.
The next step was a magical site called Hampi, also in Karnataka, "our" neighbour-state : imagine a hudge desert-like area covered with big sandstones piled-up to the top of small hills. Between the hills, banana, coconut & sugarcane fields. And lost in the fields, temples hosting big Ganesh, Narasami (Vishnu's fifth avatar, looks like a chinese dragon with swollen eyes, the biggest and most famous in India), linguam (Shiva's symbol) statues, elephant stables, baths...All from Vijayanagar civilisation that started a brillant period of temple construction in the South in the 14-16th centuries. Was defeated & ruined by allied sultans from North India in a 100.000-man battle in 17th cent. Great landscapes of gopurams (tour at entry of hindu temple) among coconut trees along a quiet river. Rent-a-bike recommanded for discovery.
Some days later, the reading of an local newspaper on the way back from Bangkok, reminded me of the therapeutical virtues of cow's dung & urine. My neighbour, an indian colleague, commented by saying that it was also an indian practice to purify (sic!) the body : internally by drinking the urine and externally by pouring fresh dung on the skin. The fact that cows are holy probably helps to accept this practice...
Moby, musician : "I wish the (US) blue states could join Canada because cultural distance is too big with the red states...". Nice project!
Back to english. First of all congrats to the french rugby team that made the oval ball sing yesterday against Italy. Ils nous ont fait plaisir! Promissing players...
Afraid to choke in Chennai, and taking some offs before "Ze Big Start", I spent recently a week-end in night trains and busses on the trace of the Mysore maharadjas, Tippu Sultan & the Vijayanagar civilisation in Hampi. Old principles respected : no advance ticket booking, one light back-pack, use you feet as much as possible. I almost regretted the first one as I saw the hudge queues (50+) in front of the ticket counters in Chennai station. Same were for the 3 ticket purchases : First time I escaped via a small counter for ticket modification where it was also possible to buy (a lot a good advisors are running through the place if you listen...) ; second time like a miracle, the queue started to melt as I start to stand there. People were leaving the counter faster than a normal ticket edition takes (cancelled train?). Last time, a guy proposed to get me a ticket, making a substancial margin using his relationship in the station's organisation. At least I avoided the traditional close body contact in the queues here. If you stand 20cm behind the next person, be sure that someone will come and stand there!
Mysore, Karnataka. Quiet city that used to host powerfull maharadjas. Big avenues, classical buidings, crazy stadiumlike palace - with integrated & covered rows of sits on the main facade for a selected but big crowd to witness the army parade (paintings inside give a feeling of its former magnificence, elephants, cows & uniforms), emotional black & white pictures from the 1930s of the last maharadja & his family...and Chamundi hill (1000 steps) with half-way to the temple on the top, the old & second biggest monolythic Shiva's bull, black-shiny thanks to the oil spread on him to avoid cracks in the stone.
30 min by car to the north starts a Tippu Sultan pilgrimage. This historical figure is a symbol of resistance against the british East Indian Company in 18th century (he-he...). On one island on the Cauvery river, 3 places : the ruine of the Sriramgapathna fort (Vauban-style from 17th century, heared French helped...), Tippu's summer residence - a wonderfull 1-storey small palace made in painted teck - in indian-moghol style showing Tippu's victorious battles and a lot of vegetal & animal scenes...
[After Tippu's defeat in 1799, the victorious colonel Welleswey lived there some years before coming back to Europe and participating to battles against Napoleon under his new tittle Lord Wellington (here some contradition between some books and the guide, not clear whether the 2 "Well"'s are one person or just cousins...can anybody help?)]
...and Tippu's mausoleum, a small mosquee with yellow flames on red background inside, reflecting the spirit of Tippu-the-Tiger. After that day, I was swimming in a perfect indian romantic-historical mood.
The next step was a magical site called Hampi, also in Karnataka, "our" neighbour-state : imagine a hudge desert-like area covered with big sandstones piled-up to the top of small hills. Between the hills, banana, coconut & sugarcane fields. And lost in the fields, temples hosting big Ganesh, Narasami (Vishnu's fifth avatar, looks like a chinese dragon with swollen eyes, the biggest and most famous in India), linguam (Shiva's symbol) statues, elephant stables, baths...All from Vijayanagar civilisation that started a brillant period of temple construction in the South in the 14-16th centuries. Was defeated & ruined by allied sultans from North India in a 100.000-man battle in 17th cent. Great landscapes of gopurams (tour at entry of hindu temple) among coconut trees along a quiet river. Rent-a-bike recommanded for discovery.
Some days later, the reading of an local newspaper on the way back from Bangkok, reminded me of the therapeutical virtues of cow's dung & urine. My neighbour, an indian colleague, commented by saying that it was also an indian practice to purify (sic!) the body : internally by drinking the urine and externally by pouring fresh dung on the skin. The fact that cows are holy probably helps to accept this practice...
Moby, musician : "I wish the (US) blue states could join Canada because cultural distance is too big with the red states...". Nice project!
