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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.
This will be really short, I just want to finish up Kumarakom since it’s been several days since we left and we’ve been in two other places. I’m behind!
Last time I forgot to mention the conversation we had on the ferry to the driftwood museum with a girl who wanted to practice her English. There were three of them in a group who stared at us for a solid thirty minutes before finally coming over to introduce themselves and explain that they wanted to practice their English. The leader was a girl who was about fourteen or fifteen and she was very pleased because she loved Will Smith and she’d never met anyone who looked like him before. I died. It was the funniest thing I ever heard and so after that of course I had to talk to her. She was adorable and talked a mile a minute once we reassured her that we could understand her English. I wish I’d exchanged emails with her, she was really sweet.
The third day we were there we decided to do a ferry ride into Alleppey. The point of the ferry ride was simply to see the backwaters. The houseboats run a nice racket showing tourists these areas and having them spend the night on the boats for the “full backwaters experience” but they’re full of mosquitoes at night and cost an arm and a leg. The ferry costs about 7-10 rupees, you see a lot more of the coastline and you get to talk to local people. Needless to say, we liked the ferry. It was a little long, about an hour and a half, but we met an adorable baby boy whose mother kept turning him to the funny looking foreigners to keep him amused. One thing that surprised me was that people in Kerala play musical babysitters on public transportation. By that I mean that one by one everyone on the ferry/bus will take a turn playing with the baby. It’s adorable.
Alleppey was a disappointment. There was nothing to do. We wandered around in the heat looking for something but to no avail. The only real reason to go to Alleppey is to take the ferry. After a few hours we took the ferry back to Kottayam which took close to three hours. Sooo long. But it was gorgeous. And when we got back to our homestay we chilled out with good food and good beer.
Later that night we went into Kottayam to watch real Kathakali for the festival. It was beautiful but real Kathakali is 2-3 hours long. And loud. Very, very loud. Which wouldn’t have been so bad if the drums hadn’t been so high pitched. It started around 10:30 and by midnight we had only seen one dance and sat through an hour of just music and drums. I wish we’d been able to stay longer but everyone was tired so we went home.
Our last day in Kumarakom was spent just taking walks and hanging out in the hammocks overlooking the rice fields. I loved G.K’s. It was so peaceful and George was wonderful. Our last few meals were delicious and spicy. Very good. Seriously, Keralan food is awesome.
And that finishes Kumarakom. Next time: Trivandrum!
Evidently our adventures on the last cockroach infested train weren’t enough and so on Sunday we decided to take the train down to Kottayam from Ernakulam. After a delicious breakfast at Kashi (because they are awesome even if there was no cake this time) we headed out.
The ride this time wasn’t bad and there were no roaches to be found. After a bit of difficulty with our bags, I swear they’re heavier than we are, we found ourselves sitting with a family headed back home to Trivandrum. It was really cute because the grandmother had lived in California for several years so of course we bonded over that and talked about the recession (and how much everyone likes Obama). It’s been really funny talking to people lately because everyone and their mother has been asking what we think about the administration and we’ve been gone for the last 2 months so we really have no idea what’s been going on besides what makes international headlines. Well, that and the ridiculous bonuses being paid for with taxpayer money but that’s a different issue.
We made it to Kottayam with no problems and were picked up and taken out to Kumarakom. Kumarakom is a series of man made islands with canals in the backwaters. Every house looks out onto the canals and because almost all of them have a boat the canals function as through roads. It’s an agricultural area and it’s harvest time before it gets too hot and the monsoons come. It’s a lovely area and unspoiled by pollution, etc. I think you could compare the peacefulness with the rural parts of Tennessee and that whole Appalachian area.
We stayed at a homestay called G.K’s. It looks out onto the rice fields and the guest house is actually separate from the main house. There are 4 rooms and they’ve all been full. George is our host and his wife cooks the best Keralan food ever. The food has been really healthy with an emphasis on fruit at breakfast and fresh vegetables for the other two meals. Yes, we eat with them three times a day because there’s no where else to go around here. But it’s totally okay because it’s so good. Be jealous. George also took extremely good care of us. He organized trips for us and drivers for the trips and when we went out on the ferry, he told us he was calling to check on it and make sure that nothing had happened. He’s a wonderful host and I’ll post his website later for anyone who has any interest in that part of Kerala.
Our first full day here we went for a canoe ride through the canals. It’s a beautiful ride and shows how impressive the canals are. As we drifted along we saw lots of people in the water doing laundry and getting ready for the day. Everyone stopped to wave and say hello as we passed. Of course part of the friendliness could be that there aren’t any other home stays in our area and so we’re the only foreigners around. Kind of like their own curiosity show. To be fair, I haven’t seen many (read any) black people either and so I’ve been getting a lot of love for my hair.
The second day we took the ferry out to go to the Driftwood Museum. It was… entertaining. Basically, the woman who runs the place started collecting driftwood as a hobby 25 years ago and she trims away the branches to expose the natural sculpture. So there’s everything from a crocodile to a rose. There’s even a handicapped family where the members have everything from a missing leg to missing fingers. It’s true! I couldn’t make something like that up. She even said, “This is the handicapped family. See how his hands are twisted backwards.” The museum itself is an interesting concept but the woman who runs it is just a little too enthusiastic and you can totally tell that she used to be a teacher. At every piece she bangs on it with a metal rod to show how fossilized it is and then makes sure that everyone can see her vision before moving on. My feeling is that it was worth it because it is different and the woman has a genuine passion for her art. And if you’re ever in that area I’d say that even if you have no interest in it, just go for the entertainment value ’cause she was hilarious.
Oh. And the children here are adorable. Every time we pass them on walks they stop us to practice their greetings in English. The exchange goes:
Child: Hi. How are you?
Us: Good. How are you?
Child: I am fine!
The exclamation point is important because it’s exactly how they say it. It’s so different from what happens in the States where we don’t really like to practice our foreign language skills with people for fear of being ridiculed.
So we’ve been having fun. I love Kerala. I really like it here and would most definitely come back. I’ll finish up with G.K’s and the rest of our stay there later, it’s bedtime now.
We decided to go out towards Munnar because it’s in the heart of the tea plantations and we’d never seen a tea plantation. The question came, as always, how would we get there? Everyone expected us to take a car because it was easier. Bah! We spit on easier! Naturally we decided to take the bus because one, it’s cheap and two, it’s cheap. A car would have cost about 2300 rupees for the 5 hours as opposed to the bus which was 150 rupees for two of us for the same amount of time (for those of you new to the rupees thing, $1 = 49 rupees). Did I mention that we’re poor students and therefore cheap?
We arrived at the bus station in time to make the 11:00 bus, the only problem was which bus we were supposed to take since nothing was written in the Roman alphabet. I never missed the alphabet more than when I was staring in confusion at the little bus placards. We asked the information desk and the guy was like, “Oh. The bus will come around 10:30 and it’ll be in front.” Sounds clear, right? Except that it was a bus station and every bus stopped in front of the station. And there were at least 3 stopped when 10:30 rolled around. We finally just kept an eye on a man who had also said that he was going to Munnar and got on when he did.
The bus ride was terrifying. Munnar is out in the mountains and to get there you take winding mountain roads that are so narrow in parts that only one car can pass at a time. Imagine doing that in a big bus that’s really old going really fast. But I have to say that the ride really wasn’t all that bad. Apart from the noise of the poor engine and that moment where we almost got hit by another bus. There was no airconditioning, which I actually liked. The open windows meant that once we left the city we had fresh air and it was amazing. Also, the air gets progressively cooler as you go up and so we had wonderful breezes. It started raining and when it does you just let the little rubber blinds down and you’re immediately in a cocoon. It’s kind of fun. And we got to Munnar on time in spite of the rain so I was impressed.
We got off in Munnar and caught a cab to Karadipara since by then we were exhausted and just wanted to get to our homestay. We got to the Rose Garden homestay and were immediately welcomed by Rajee (our host Tomy’s wife) and her eldest son. They were amazing. They got us in out of the rain and settled into our rooms in no time. Rajee brought out tea and biscuits and we settled back to chat and enjoy the rain from the porch. As part of our homestay, we got homecooked Keralan food and Rajee’s food was kind of incredible. Spicy and good for you. We also had water in which cumin had been boiled. It was really good and, according to Tomy, it was good for the digestion.
Our homestay was an eco-friendly farm where they cultivate flowers, cardamon, herbs, pepper, coffee and a whole host of other things. We went on a tour of the garden and loved it. It was gorgeous and so peaceful and there was even a hammock out back. Also, Tomy and Rajee’s youngest son is about six years old and the cutest thing ever. So we had fun playing with him even though he liked to play the boy games where he hits you…
The next day we went on a one day trek through a tea plantation and the surrounding woods. To get there, we had to drive for an hour through winding roads and back rural roads. One of the roads was built over marshy lands and so there were potholes where the land had just sunk after the rains. We got to the tea plantation and started out on our hike. We crossed over a dam that helped supply electricity to part of the mountain and had children playing in the water. Then we went up through the hills. The tea plantations here are busy year round and it’s backbreaking work. The most interesting thing about this plantation is that it has housing on site for families. In that way they cut down on commuting and have both the men and the women working together. The women do the picking, the men do the snipping and pruning. It’s a vaguely feudal system, I will admit. But it seems to work.
We met two guys from England that showed up that night who were kind of amazing. Because we’d already been out that way and knew vaguely where we were going we took them out to the View Point which overlooks the mountains for a beautiful panorama of the region. The guys had just been to Rajasthan and were finishing up their holiday in Kerela. I’m kind of bummed that we left. They were really cute.
We left Sunday to go back to Fort Cochin because we really loved it there, and because we are cheap and didn’t learn our lesson the last time we took the bus again. This time it was more death-defying because our driver took the approach that he was the biggest thing on the road (which was kind of true since the trucks look like toys) and therefore could speed down the mountain roads with impunity. And speed he did as we careened down the roads. But we made it! And we made it back to Fort Cochin where we had Italian food for dinner and cake from Teapot for dessert. It was good cake!
We’re further south and in the backwaters now. It’s beautiful here. But this post has been long so more about Kumarakom later!
Footloose & Fancy Free 