India Wrap Up

I guess I should finish off the India section of the blog, now that I've been home a week. When we last saw our intrepid heroes they were setting off from the hillstation of Munnar in the Western Ghats to the idyllic backwaters of Kerala. The bus ride was STEEP and winding, or at least I thought so. Our bus driver was largely unfazed and took every hairpin at the maximum possible speed. I had been under the impression that motion sickness could not be a fatal illness, but watching Sharada's face as it assumed various shades of green and purple made me think again. Eventually we did reach relatively flat ground, and some time after that a bus station. Somehow by wandering vaguely south we managed to catch the ferry for Allepey with approximately 3 seconds to spare.
The ferry ride was possibly my favorite part of the trip and at 10 Rs(20 cents) was definitely a bargain. We cruised along sleepy canals and lakes which were sometimes so full of flowering water plants that you literally could not see the water and it appeared as though we were sailing through a cloverfield in spring bloom. A cloverfield surrounded by palmtrees heavy with coconuts. They were also full of any number of birds, and--Sharada claimed--snakes. Also we got to see the most isolated rural landscapes of our trip as many of the houses and even farms along the route can only be reached by boat. Allepey--another contender for the "Venice of the East" title also claimed by Udaipur--was nothing particularly special. We left again in the morning for an all day cruise on a tourist boat to Kollam, where we also had no intention of staying. The tourist boat plied many similar canals, and while it was much more comfortable than the ferry, at 400 Rs it couldn't hope to compare on the cost/benefit scale. We saw any number of people dredging the canals, sometimes with a fanciful floating backhoe, but most with a canoe, a bucket and an impressive lung capacity. We also passed a plant where they apparently extract uranium from the black sand in the canals, sand in which I was to be covered for several days.





Upon arrival we immediately hopped in a cab with a tired-looking Indian couple and their two young children, for Varkala, which has one of the world's great beaches. Because our cabbie wasn't from Varkala he drove the lot of us around in circles for 40 minutes looking for our hotel and the Indians missed their train(I think) and had to stay there as well. I don't feel too bad because they stayed two days, as did we. We spent them being uber-tourists, lying in the sun, body surfing, and shopping for souvenirs. I had so much fun in the sun and salt water that I nearly collapsed from dehydration. I could hear Mom shaking her head and saying "too much fun."
We eventually made it Cochin via a second class train, which involved me sitting for 3 hours on the luggage rack above the seats. As luggage racks go, it was fairly comfortable. The only really uncomfortable part was when a food vendor spilled coconut chutney all over me and even worse, the dapper backpacker seated below me. By the time I had taken care of my personal chutney issues well enough to come down she had somehow managed to clean the chutney out of her lovely felt cap(with feather!) but I don't think she managed to forgive me.
Cochin was fairly nice, but frankly we were hot and oh-so-sweaty and tired and more concerned about our onward travel arrangements. Sharada and I split up--for the first time in two solid months--so that she could fly out of Mumbai, and I could fly out of Delhi. I was only on my own for about 2 days, but she has 11 before Pieter meets her in Thailand. It was strange, but I got used to it fairly quickly. I may have spent rather more time in the hotel room in Delhi than I would have if I had needed to justify my time to someone else.

Delhi was much more genial than our first visit, mostly because of Holi: the Festival of Colors, which I had forgotten about until a day or two before. Apparently it celebrates some Gods triumphing over other less righteous Gods and/or falling in love with each other, the accounts in the English papers varied somewhat. The point is that because of this momentous event from before time began every year on the 15th of Phalgun everyone goes out in the streets and tries to dye each other every possible color, which is incredibly entertaining. Think nationwide waterfight/paintball session. This is also the actual reason that it is celebrated, even by many non-Hindus, including me. At first I thought I might have missed the whole thing because by the time I made to breakfast I saw a lot of people, kids mostly, covered in dye, but no one dyeing each other. In fact this was more like the children of a certain age who absolutely cannot wait for Christmas, and sneak downstairs and open presents. Things didn't really pick up until noon. I decided that since I had more or less missed things, I would walk through Old Delhi to the Red Fort because we were so sad that it was closed last time. By the time I got there, a group of youngish men, who were quite drunk and/or stoned(certains types of marijuana are legal during the festival) had covered me head to foot in vegetable dye and tempura paint. Also a number of children had shot me with supersoakers full of dye and several young girls had hurled buckets of diluted dye onto me from roof tops. The upshot was that I looked like I had fallen into a spin-art machine.

At first I thought the fort was closed again, but in fact it was, like much of the city, just very empty because older people and women tend to stay indoors all day. It seemed to be a popular spot for non-participants, such as large muslim and sikh families, all of whom were well dressed and not at all covered in dye. You could say I stuck out a little. In fact muffled laughter(and uncontainable guffaws) seemed to follow me throughout the fort as well as calls of "Merry Holi". I got even more dyed on the way back to the hotel. After 4 showers and intense scrubbing my forehead was still a merry magenta hue while my back was a sickly teal. Luckily this did not present any issues when I had to board my plane that evening.

















Signing off for now, Eric.

49,000 Hectares of Tea.

Our mad dash across the south, from coast to coast continues. We've been moving on every day or, not so much because we dislike places, but because we run out of things to do. As unemployed people with no connections who don't really speak the language most cities offer a limited number of interesting activities, and the ones which have a broader selection are inevitably so touristy we can't afford to do most of them. We spent the better part of two days in Pondicherry, mostly waiting for it cool off, or for a bus. The humidity just drains the life right out of you. We've stopped asking at the hotels about hot water, partly because they always lie, and partly because we come back from the day soaked already. Pondicherry(Pondi) was a French colony until recently and still feels kind of French. The same way I can kind of speak French by speaking Spanish with an accent. The streets are laid out mostly on a grid and people seem to obey traffic cops, and there's sewers. And of course the occasional technicolor Hindu temple with a real live elephant inside(no pictures please), just like Paris. I got a sandwich on a baguette and fell in love with France all over again.

From there onto Madurai which has the most fantastic temple I've never seen. It has huge towers covered with a riot of brightly painted Hindu sculpture, which were completely covered with scaffolding, and palmfronds just to make sure that you really couldn't see any part of it. The inside is huge, and has long collonades with intricate carvings and bright paintings and again an elephant(camera died). It was very keep there and we ate a lot of dosas and uttapam(oothapan?utthapham? everyone spelled it differently), which are essentially Sharada's favorite foods. Then we had a nice bus ride through the plains and mountains where they seem to grow most of the world's spices and coconuts up to Periyar wildlife sanctuary. Didn't see much wildlife(one huge bison(guar, much better name), but the jungle was fantastic. Met some nice tourists on a much larger budget than us(they took a taxi 200 miles!) and saw some crazy Keralan dancing. From there we got(eventuallly) to Munnar, which is even higher in the mountains and grows tea, tea, and more tea. It's much cooler and drier here, and there's lot's to see, but again, we can only afford so much of it. It's very beautiful, and it looks like Switzerland, I think. In fact there is an Indo-Swiss dairy. Swiss cows look very buttoned-down compared to their anything goes Indian counterparts. The town is surrounded by 49,000 hectares of tea plantations which is probably a lot(I think we skipped hectares in the metric unit at school) all of which are owned by the Tata corporation, which is the biggest company you've never heard of, the make steel, autos, luggage, and lots and lots of tea, which is very picturesque when it's growing. My time is nearly up and I'm trying to cram as much in without killing myself as I can before leaving. Moving on again tomorrow, down to the seaside, which is meant to be fantastic, and then, back to Delhi and then back to the U.S. Crazy.