Galen & Rebecca Kennel’s Weblog

In the morning we go in search of a hotel. The Andra Pradesh Tourism Dept. has a tourism desk at the train station, so we stop by to see what kind of information we can get. We manage to get a tiny map of the city that is almost readable without a magnifying glass. When asked where the train station is on the map, the tourism officer takes the map, turns it around a few times, then points to somewhere near the middle of the map.

Thanks. Information, printed or verbal, is not one of India’s strong points. That’s where all these touts come in. Somehow, two guys have attached themselves to us and are taking us to a hotel near here. We insist that we don’t want a taxi. We are just walking around a bit, exploring. And we want to eat first. But they insist that a nice, budget hotel is just around the corner. So we follow them to the Hotel Vikram.

Hotel Vikram is set back off the street in a courtyard and our room has a large balcony overlooking it. It’s quiet and clean. Thanks, guys. Here’s 20 rupees. Now you can leave. We will collect our own bags from the station and walk back here.

Vijayawada is a city of over a million people along the Krishna River near India’s east coast. There isn’t much here to see, but we wanted to break our train journey to Kolkata up into a couple of ‘day trips’.

We climb the Gandhi Hill and ride the little train that goes around the hill. We go exploring around the city through amazing markets and streets. We take a taxi over to another part of town and explore the markets in the richer part of town. Everywhere we go we ride the waves in the sea of humanity. People, people, people.

One morning we take an autorickshaw 8 km out of town to the 7^th century Undavalli Cave Temples. Our book says that bus 301 will take you there, but of course none of the drivers will admit it. They insist no bus goes out that way. We manage to negotiate with a driver to take us out, wait ½ hour while we tour the caves, then bring us back.

The drive takes us over the Krishna River and out through villages and farmland.

It’s another one of these temples that has two entrance fees – one for Indians and one for foreigners. Our driver waits at the bottom as we climb up and explore the caves. As we climb, we see the 301 bus go by.

Photos from around Vijayawada.