From Shirley Mancino Travel notes in India

Jan. 20,2009
We are spending 3 days in Panjim, Goa's capital city, an old Portuguese type city filled with ancient building and colonial charm. Next we head into the interior to Badami, then Bijapur, Karnataka. then on to Hyderabad and the east coast. We have been eating our way around this city as food, fish and sweets principally are cheap, great and plentiful. Today we toured Old Goa which at its height in the 1600's was bigger and more magnificent than Lisbon and most other European cities. What is left now are huge old churches and cathedrals.very interesting..........

Badami Jan 24-29/09
We are now on the road and having a difficult time adjusting. Our train trip to here was smooth but we had to get a bus at 5:45 am to get to the train and we don't usually sleep much the nite before when we travel....maybe we are getting too old for this.

Badami was a capital city of the Chalukya empire in the 300-600's. It has got amazing old cave temples with intricate carvings and this was a period of experimentation in free standing temple building so those sights are marvelous....one was a world heritage sight stuck in the middle of nowhere.

Also the old sites are built around a lake which was very peaceful and cool and provided a great respite. The new town sees very few foreign tourists so we are constantly stared at, smiled at, asked what is your name? and the children persistently ask for school pens or to have their picture taken and only occasionally do they ask for rupees. The more well healed Indian tourists with cell phones or cameras always want to take our pic with them. We are enjoying the interaction most of the time....it is better than being largely ignored in a more touristy place.

Republic day was celebrated here on Monday...I was taking pics of the dancers and was invited to come sit up on stage and they were taking my pic for their newspapers!

The atmosphere
The towns are dusty, dirty, filled with garbage, smoke from dung and wood fires and diesel fumes. I spend my time either plugging my ears, and /or holding my nose or have a scarf over my nose. Our hair and nose and ears fill up with dirt. We have hot water sometimes....usually out of a bucket instead of a geyser. The power is intermittent.
Bijapur
Now we in this ancient capital....the shahs ruled here from 1400-1600 so it is very Muslim in its vast mausoleums and mosques....one of which holds 2250 worshipers at a time. Another apparently inspired the Taj mahal and another has a dome as big as St Peter's in Rome. Another would not allow women inside, but they don't make me dress up in chador/burka like they made me do in Malaysia. In the court yard of one mosque were several people each chained with huge shackles to a tree....the only explanation we got was that they are mentally ill people.