I started another blog since it seemed right that grad school have its own space where I can freak out about deadlines and life in general. I’ll keep this one as a general travel blog and the other one will be daily life. So. Click the link below to see what I’ve been up to.
Apparently I was supposed to keep posting over here even though I was home and doing nothing all that interesting- a few road trips, a wedding, lots of time at the beach, and Vegas. Who knew? This whole blogging thing is tricky.
But. I’m not sure whether or not I’ll keep updating this one or start another one since I start school in a few weeks and that’s a whole other can of worms that kind of deserves its own space far away from carefree travel and a noticable lack of deadlines. So we shall see.
Hope everyone is having a great summer!
The next day was met with success! We got up and made it out the door early enough to make the first ferry out to Elephanta Island. The ferry is government run, but in the spirit of enterprise, any tour kiosk can sell the tickets and their kiosks are right next to the government one. Moral of the story: go with the government kiosk and pay the regular fare. It may not seem like a lot of money (yes, we are quibbling over dollars here) but you get a free tour by a government tour guide along with your ticket, so it’s worth it. Oh. And to get into the caves is about 750 rupees if you’re a foreigner. It’s like 50 if you’re an Indian. Eerily similar to the exploitation of the Taj and the other World Heritage sites we visited.
The ride over is about an hour and fifteen minutes, but it takes a bit longer because both trips the ferry acts like a taxi service and drops people off at or picks people up from the boats they work on. It’s really funny because it’s like a line of baby chicks hopping off of one boat and onto the other. Once we got going the ride was fairly uneventful, only one girl got seasick and fortunately she made it to the side of the boat before being thoroughly sick. It’s a pretty ride over, or maybe I just love being on the water. Either way, it wasn’t a hardship and I had fun.
We made it to the island and immediately an independent tour guide latched onto us. And wouldn’t leave. He followed us almost all the way down the dock pitching himself (and it’s a long dock) before Kate finally said, “Yes. I’m sure you’re a great guide. But we don’t need you.” I will say this for the guides we’ve encountered so far: they are remarkably persistent. And I mean, it’s a good thing because after he left us he pitched his services to another guy who took him. Speaking of persistence, after you pay the tourist tax (before paying for the caves themselves) you walk up these cobblestone steps which are more like an upward sloping path. All along this path are people selling things. You can have two men carry you to the top in a chair if you’re too lazy to walk it yourself, you can buy potato burgers, and you can do a little souvenir shopping. I kid you not. It’s an uphill market. Anyways, we made it up the path and there were the caves.
The complex of caves were started in the 10th century but not completed until the 13th century. The caves are a shrine and a temple for Shiva. They’re absolutely beautiful and were excavated by hand over a period of centuries, which makes their intricacy even more impressive. Unfortunately, they’re not in great condition because the Portuguese had a blast defacing them. There are 5 caves, but only the first one is complete so when you have a tour, they generally will just walk you around the first one and give you a really detailed explanation of the different wall carvings and the religion. Our guide was this adorable woman who can’t have been taller than my boobs and she was very good about making sure that we saw and understood everything there was to see and understand about the different carvings. After we wandered down to find the fifth cave (which looks as though it has partially collapsed) we were melting in the heat. Literally. It was really gross. So we decided it was time to head back to the mainland.
We got back to shore and immediately went shopping. Yes, that was more important than going to a museum because I was leaving the next morning to go home. So shopping. I want to bore you with details, but I won’t. I’ll just say that the Cottage Emporium near the Taj hotel is a must for crafts from around the country. And the FabIndia down the street has a café upstairs which serves fabulous coffee and delicious sandwiches. Oh. And the Oxford Books across from the park where the kids play cricket has really cheap books. It’s kind of amazing.
And what would a day out be without a little drama? It turns out that Kate’s phone couldn’t receive calls or texts all day for some odd reason. And Pinky had tried to reach us because she’d found out that we were just wandering around all day and she didn’t know where we were. So she freaked out and called her husband, who tried to call us and it obviously didn’t work. So she starts freaking out more and calls over to the Elephanta Island tourism office and the security there to check and see if we were in a hospital or in jail or something. And the entire time her husband is like, “They’re fine. They’ve been wandering all over Asia for over two months. Stop worrying.” Because we stop worrying when someone tells us to? Anyway. Long story short, we finally met up with the husband outside of his office and he tells us, while laughing, the saga of what went down that day. I died. Yes, I know, it’s not nice to laugh when other people are concerned for your safety, but that’s not what I laughed about. It was just the husband’s whole attitude about the whole thing. He was so blasé about it and half asleep, it was kind of amazing.
We got home and had a lovely dinner, family style again, and a nice chat. I absolutely adore Pinky and her husband. They are quite possibly the nicest people ever. And it was so sweet of them to worry about us. I mean, we have no real connection to them and they took us in and treated us like family. I am still overwhelmed by their kindness.
After dinner Kate went out for karaoke while I settled in to pack and take a quick nap since I needed to leave at 1am to catch a flight. Oh. And since I was already sick at that point (just a cold, no worries), it made the flight very sad. As in I couldn’t hear I was so congested sad. But I can say that my sadness was eased when I learned that the Bombay airport has a Coffee Bean & Tea Leaf in the terminal. It was beautiful. Well, maybe that’s going a bit far. And the Doha airport was not my favorite place to rest for three hours, but whatever it was clean. Anyway, I obviously made it back safe and sound and then I slept for three days.
I might do an overall impressions post or something. Otherwise there’s nothing else until I go somewhere. Maybe the Creationism Museum? Oh. And I still need something to do this summer, suggestions are welcome. I’ll even unblock the comments feature for you!
We left Varikatt Homestay on a Sunday and hopped a flight up to Mumbai. Or Bombay. But really Mumbai. Or whatever you want to call it seeing as everyone still calls it Bombay! It gets really annoying actually. You’ll be talking to someone and they’ll say: “Oh. Where are you going?” You say, “Mumbai for a few days.” They say, “Bombay is a great city.” It doesn’t matter where you are or who you’re talking to. I even had that same conversation in Doha on the flight home. I have yet to meet someone who hasn’t dropped Bombay into the conversation after I’ve said Mumbai.
Anyway. We were staying with Kate’s mom’s friend’s sister (complicated enough?) and her family is full of the nicest people you will ever meet. We arrived late in the evening before Pinkey (the sister) got home and so her husband and son sat with us for a while, chatting and making sure that we were settled in all right. Almost immediately after we got our tea, her husband started peppering us with questions about what we wanted to do and where we wanted to go during our stay in Bombay. Then he said, “What do you want to do tonight?” To which we had no real reply since we’d just gotten to their house a good twenty minutes ago. So he says, “You could go shopping. Or you could see a movie. Yeah, why don’t you go see a movie?” He turns to his son, “Get the paper to see what movies are out. Then take them to a movie.” We tried to protest that the son really didn’t have to go with us because we were big girls and could totally do it on our own and he just shook his head, “No. He’ll take you to a movie.” Then he made his son go wake one of the cousins up. So she comes up and he says, “Meet [insert name]. She’ll take you shopping if you want. And she’ll go to the movie with you tonight.” I’m usually not overwhelmed, but I’ve never seen so many avenues of escape cut off like that. So we went to a movie and ran into several other members of the family. A side note so that this exchange makes more sense. In India, if the families can afford it, they’ll buy a whole building and the entire family—husbands, wives, cousins, grandparents—will live there. So when we went to the movies with the cousin, we went downstairs to collect her.
The movie we saw was Little Zizou. It’s the cutest movie ever. It’s set in Bombay and is told from the point of view of Xerxes, Little Zizou, a soccer-crazy Parsi boy. The movie follows the feud between Zizou’s family, headed by his religious fanatical father, and their rival family who owns a newspaper that prints dissenting opinions. If it comes out in the US near you, you should definitely check it out. I usually don’t have the attention span for movies told by children, but it moves really quickly and isn’t childish. It’s a really entertaining film and is an interesting look at the Parsis in India. Especially since it manages to look at religious extremism in a funny way.
When we got back, Pinkey was there and she sent us upstairs to chat with her husband and his friend. The husband and friend have a tradition where they meet on the terrace for a beer and snacks every Sunday. We were invited up to their domain and sat outside enjoying the company and the stars. The beer wasn’t bad either, Kingfisher is a good brand. We had a really interesting conversation about the status of women in India and the whole public sphere vs. private sphere thing that we’d been noticing. The two men said that in India, in general women are respected and that as a woman traveling alone (even a foreigner) people will take better care of you because they’ll worry. What stood out for me the most about this conversation was the fact that the implication was that women were respected as long as they acted a certain way, i.e., modest. What gets me about the word ‘modest’ is how it’s full of moral judgments and that there is no one definition. For me, most Indian clothing is actually immodest. People wear see-through kurtas and the sari blouses are like bustier tops. But for India, jeans and a t-shirt are immodest because you see a clear outline of the body. It was a good time and good company.
The next day was our first full day in Bombay and we were thwarted from the start. We had planned to go to the Elephanta Caves and the Prince Albert Museum, but it turns out that both of them were closed on Monday. So instead, Pinkey’s husband took us on a driving tour of Bombay. It’s actually a very small city, about 16 miles I think he said. We traveled back uptown to go to Pinkey’s office and see what she does. We hung out for a bit, ate lunch, and then headed out to FabIndia to do some quality shopping. I love FabIndia. Seriously. It’s the most amazing store ever. You can get kurtas for like 5 USD. It’s incredible. I can get silk there for about 20 USD. I love it. I was in heaven. Although I didn’t buy nearly as much as I wanted. After that it was off on an odyssey to find Cottons. The odyssey failed. Miserably. But we got to wander around Northern Bombay and check out the stores so it was fun. The nice think about Bombay is that there are so many people that you don’t get hassled to buy things nearly as much.
We left Pinkey’s again and went down to visit her mom at her apartment. There we met more of her family; a sister-in-law and a niece. They were really nice. The niece is sixteen and quite possibly the cutest girl you’ll ever meet. We bonded over Twilight and how cute Rob Pattinson is. Yes, I am occasionally a silly teenage girl, but Rob Pattinson is gorgeous and worth a small loss of dignity. And then we got fed again. Samosas and some kind of rice cake. It was good. And I know that complaining about being fed is bad, but it does get really tiring after a while.
Dinner was delicious. It was all different varieties of local seafood and curries. My favorite has to be this really spicy sauce that tasted almost like eating pure hot sauce. Made all the more potent by the fact that we were drinking beer with dinner and there was not a drop of water in sight. We followed dinner with a bottle of wine. Holy crap we had so much to drink that night. I had the biggest headache that night. But it was well worth it.
Next time: my last day in Mumbai!
I posted the Trivandrum post that I started out in India and then I realized that I should let you know that I left India earlier this week.
I made it back home Wednesday night and have been sleeping like a fiend ever since. I mean in the last two days I’ve slept for over twenty hours. I also caught a wicked cold and can’t hear out of one ear anymore. Very sad.
I’ve started posting photos on Flickr (yes, yes, finally) and I’ll finish up the series of blog posts (soon, I promise!) to bring us up to date.
We decided that to complete our coastal tour, we’d make it down to Thiruvananthapuram or Trivandrum as it was known before the name change (and what the locals still call it). Seriously, why go for something so complicated? To get there, we took another train. I know, I know, us and the train rides. I’m beginning to think that our first train ride was just a fluke because I haven’t seen any roaches since then. Then again, it could also be because we’re only traveling during the day and roaches are nocturnal. I don’t know. Anyway, from Kottayam it’s only a three-hour ride, so it wasn’t too bad. We lucked out because there was almost no one on the train and we actually had our sleeper compartment to ourselves. There was an adorable little girl on the train who we played with for a bit. Yes, I like kids and my biological clock starts ticking whenever we meet a cute kid, but not to worry! They start screaming and the clock completely stops. We’re talking sabotage and gears grinding to a halt. Anyway, we got in around 6pm and took a tuk tuk to the Varikatt Heritage Homestay.
Varikatt is run by this really nice retired decorated Colonel named Roy. Roy turned his family’s home into a homestay after he retired as a way to meet people and have some fun. He’s really funny and plans to have a cookbook out sometime next year full of his recipes and anecdotes; I think the title is Cooking with the Colonel. He has some really entertaining riddles that will make it in there as well. I’ll link to it when it comes out. It’s a gorgeous house with five guestrooms and a large main house. Each guestroom is massive and has an amazing bathroom. Oh, and can I just say that Roy also cooks. Amazingly well. And because it’s the South, we didn’t have vegetarian food. Our first night there dinner was tandoori chicken and a sampling of other Keralan cuisines. At the Varikatt you eat family style and Roy also ate with us, which was really nice. He also shared the story behind the house with us. It’s kind of tragic. Girl meets boy on a boat, girl moves from England to follow boy to India. Girl builds her dream house, finds the guy, and marries him only to find out that while he’s away in the tea plantations he is less than faithful. Girl gives up her dream house to keep an eye on her errant husband. The whole story is online and once again, kind of tragic. I can’t believe she gave up her house because of her douche-y husband. Oh well. That’s love.
Because we only had one full day in Trivandrum we decided to do a “best of” tour. Be impressed. Neither of us had gotten very much sleep the night before and we were woken up by a barking dog around 5am. So the fact that we were productive at all was a spectacular feat. We started at the public parks and made our way through the Napier Museum and the zoo there. The Napier Museum was… interesting. It had a good collection of religious artifacts from all over Asia including leather shadow puppets from Bali (so cool!) and a collection of Chinese masks (wasn’t sure what the point of those was). The Hindu artifacts of the different gods were particularly cool and well preserved. The only bummer was that there were no notes up to explain what the different artifacts were or the reason for putting them all together (like why put Chinese vases in the exhibit). The zoo was awesome. It’s this large open-air zoo in the middle of the city and has over 75 different species of animals there. We saw hippos! And monkeys! And I was a bit too excited about them. What can I say? I like zoos.
Then we made it across town to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple. The Swamy Temple is one of the holy temples of Lord Vishnu and the outside shows Vishnu reclining over a serpent. I wish I knew more about Hinduism so that I could give a bit more description about the story it depicts, but my knowledge about the temple runs out there. It’s a massive structure. It takes about 15-20 minutes walking to get from the North Gate to the East Gate. You’re actually not allowed inside the temple unless you’re a Hindu, but you can take photos outside and the monks are really nice. It’s a beautiful temple and the most famous one in Trivandrum. We ran into someone who was very friendly and the first thing he said was, “Well, you’re going to the Swamy Temple, right?”
We ended in the Puthe Maliga Palace, the palace of the old rajas of Trivandrum that’s been converted into a museum. You’re only allowed into the museum with a guide who knows the history of the Palace. It’s a beautiful structure that was built about 200 years ago and is full of gifts given to the rajas from various European powers. There’s even a crystal throne. I’m not kidding. A throne made entirely out of crystal. Decadent much? The Palace is huge, there are only twenty rooms open but another sixty rooms still haven’t been renovated, nor are there any plans to renovate them in the near future. It’s kind of a bummer because it could be so cool. The outer courtyard is even used for a classical concert during the winter months that’s free to the public.
Once we were done with the Palace, we were pretty much beat. The heat that day was intense and I think I got sunburned on my feet (again) since they started peeling two days later. I even drank an entire liter of water in about an hour and for those of you who know me, that’s an impressive feat. It was ridiculous. So we went home and vegged out for the rest of the evening before dinner.
One thing that we kept discussing was that we saw men everywhere. It just brought home how different India is in the separation of the public and private sphere with respect to gender. We saw women mainly when we left the main streets and were wandering the residential areas. Men were everywhere: in the restaurants, public transportation, stores, and the main streets. Which is not to say that there aren’t women out and about, women work and do all sorts of things. It’s just that the public sphere is very male dominated. It’s usually not too bad; for the most part as long as your clothes are loose you aren’t hassled. It only starts to feel a little threatening when you walk into an Internet café and you are the only woman in the room and the room is packed.
That’s it for now. Next time: Mumbai!
