Vellore to Tirupati
December 13th 1995
When i left Madras, i'd only been intending to travel as far as Senji with Jen, but somehow that had developed into a bit more of a wander than i'd expected. I didn't really have anything particular that i wanted to do and i thought i might as well keep Jenny company for a while and check out a few places that i wouldn't have seen otherwise.
I wanted to go to Auroville, a community near Pondicherry, where they're doing interesting work with permaculture and with computers, but the closest point i'd got to there was Senji. Now i was going further and further away from it. But that was often the way it was when i was trying to get somewhere. I'd had to go almost the whole way round the world to get from Malaysia to India, after all. A little detour between Madras and Pondicherry was nothing really. I'd get there eventually - if i was meant to, anyway. However, it looked like i was going to end up in Hampi for the new moon and solstice on the way to Pondy. Oh well... that's life!
From Vellore, we got a train to Tirupati, which was over the state border in Andhra Pradesh. It was about a three hour journey by ordinary, slow, passenger train.
Tirupati wasn't actually where Jenny was heading though, for the next place on her agenda. There was a palace and a hill fort at Chandragiri, which was a few miles south of Tirupati. By the look of the map, the railway line didn't go through that town though.
Jenny was reading when we stopped at Chandragiri railway station. I looked at the sign and thought "shit! that's where we're supposed to be going, isn't it?" I told her where we were and we quickly got our bags together and tried to get off the train before it started again. I made it easily, but Jenny's pack was much heavier than my two bags and she nearly didn't make it at all. I thought i was going to have to get back on, but at the last minute she jumped from the moving train and landed safely on the platform.
We asked if there were any hotels around and the station staff directed us to where we could catch a bus to Chandragiri town, which was about three kilometres away from the station. We walked up the dirt road next to the railway line and ended up in a small village of little thatched huts which were along both sides of the road. One of the locals told us there was a bus to Chandragiri in about two hours. Otherwise it was a two kilometre walk. Walking seemed like the best option, but we decided to sit for a while and rest before continuing.
As we sat down, what must have been a fair proportion of the village population crowded around us to have a look at the funny white people who were passing through their village for some reason. They asked us a few questions, through one man who spoke English, and stood around us in a semi-circle and just watched. We drank soda water at a nearby kiosk, which came in the old-fashioned marble-stoppered bottles, which they still seemed to use a lot in India. These bottles have a wide neck with a glass marble trapped in it so it can move around but not get into the body of the bottle or out of the mouth. When the bottle is full, the marble is forced against a rubber seal around the inside of the top of the neck by the gas pressure, this seals it very effectively. To open them you just have to poke the marble down into the bottle, using a bit of pressure, and it drops down into the neck allowing you to drink. These bottles were made of thick, tough glass, and could be refilled indefinitely. There were people in Britain who collected them as antiques.
The walk into Chandragiri was quite pleasant, despite the hot sun, but Jenny was struggling a bit under the weight of her pack. However, when we got there, we found there weren't any hotels and we'd have to go to Tirupati anyway. That was a bit of a drag after the walk, but it was only a half hour bus journey, so it wasn't too bad really. It had been interesting to have a quick look at Chandragiri and it was a shame there wasn't anywhere to stay as it looked like a nice place.
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I was intending to go to Chandragiri with Jenny the next morning and have a look at what was there, but i was really exhausted so i didn't bother in the end. I slept instead.
Tirupati was a really weird town. It was one of the major pilgrimage sites in India, on account of a temple at Tirumala, twenty kilometres away, up in the hills. There was also a large temple in the centre of town and a museum of temple art next to it. The town seemed to be full of bald people - it was a bit like an indian skinhead convention. For some reason connected with their pilgrimage, a large proportion of the visitors to Tirupati got their heads shaved while they were there. Because it was a major pilgrim centre for people from all round India, there were a lot of people who spoke different languages and the place had a much more cosmopolitan feel than you might expect in a smallish country town.
Our hotel was across the road from the bus station where the buses to Tirumala go from. They start before dawn and there was an amazing amount of noise from very early morning till very late at night.
Next to the bus station was a large tank - a sort of reservoir and bathing place. The sides were long stone steps going from street level down to below the water level and in the middle there was a stone platform sticking up out of the water with a sort of little temple on it. Jenny told me that for certain festivals they floated an image of a god out to these places and put them in the temple bit. I guess the tank was about a hundred feet square at water level.
The worst thing about Tirupati was that it was in Andhra Pradesh. And Andhra Pradesh was a dry state. You couldn't buy any alcohol there. Unusually, i hadn't had a drink for a couple of days before we left Vellore, so i was quite desperate for a beer. But of course, there was no beer to be had. It was stupid of me really, i knew A.P. was a dry state - or at least i'd heard it was and i'd heard it wasn't. I should at least have taken the precaution of buying a bottle of vodka in Vellore. As it was, i had no prospect of a beer until we got to Karnataka, which would be at least another three days. Shit! Nothing makes you more desperate for a drink than knowing you can't have one.