Our Kerela photos are on iCloud here: https://www.icloud.com/iphoto/projects/#8;CAEQARoQuWj_bg94JNNh9wuTyGGCSw;F644C559-9FAF-47DE-A477-159649E391BE
We took a "semi-sleeper" bus to Trivandrum. I think it is called this because passengers only semi-sleep. It was an upgrade from our previous bus rides. This one had AC and the seats reclined to about 120 degrees. I must have slept because the 10 hours went by fairly quickly.
Trivandrum's official name these days is Thiruvananthapuram, but thank goodness no one calls it that. I have not heard it said out loud, so anyone's guess is as good as mine. It's a little city in Kerela, our seventh Indian state visited so far.
We came here for Trivandrum's Zoological Gardens. This was the zoo Yan Martel was inspired by when he wrote Life of Pi. The animal enclosures there are supposed to be designed after the size and essence (minus the crowds) of their natural habitats. The animals are not often caged, but are surrounded by deep ravines that keep them from coming leaving the area built specifically for their habits. The sloth bear above was buisly digging for grubs. Occasionally he'd look up at us, then get back to work.
We saw a rhinoceros! It looked absolutely prehistoric. Its skim was like leather armor perfectly placed with a space for its little tail tail.
And stocky, stout hippos. These guys are known to have a violent temprament and can run faster than humans.
We ate three big meals a day in Triv on less than $9 total. We had tasty veg Kerela meals that cost less than a dollar and kept coming until we were totally stuffed. We also ate at a super neat Indian Coffee House in a spiraling tower. This place reflects the strong communist presence in Kerela. This chain of snack shops began in colonial times, but when the British moved to shut them down, a leader in the 50s organized the employees into the India Coffee Board Worker's Co-operative Society. All the India Coffee Houses are now employee owned. They still go old school in uniforms complete with peacock-flared hats.
There is an over 200 year old palace here called Puthe Maliga. Sadly, we were not allowed to take photos inside.
We hopped on another public bus to get to Kollam. It was jammed packed with people, as usual. This one was classified as "super fast", which was a mystery to us until we were en route. There are no elevated highways bipassing villages. There are no special bus lanes. It is one official lane going one direction, and one official lane going the other. I say 'official' because there is the middle of the road that serves as the unofficial passing lane for both sides. Our "super fast" bus spent more than 50 percent of our ride in that middle area. Through the front window, we watched cars and trucks coming straight at us and people running for their lives out of our path. This was punctuated by honking horns so loud I think they should be made illegal.
It felt inevitable that we would be in some kind of accident. Miracuously, when it did happen we were hardly moving. I didn't even feel the bump when we hit the rickshaw ahead of us in the traffic jam. Our attention was called to the ordeal when our driver was out the window to his waist, screaming in Malayalam and whipping his sandal at a man outside. Turns out this man was the passenger of the rickshaw. Bus employees inside ran to peel our raging best-defence-is-a-good-offence driver away from the window. A hijab-clad woman I imagine was the passenger's mother did her best to tug her son away from the flying shoe. The driver of the rickshaw must have felt he had to show some emotion in this passion firestorm, so he stood far out of reach from our driver and shouted some obligatory anger in the direction of the bus. Once everyone was sufficiently restrained, traffic started to flow again. As abruptly as the scene started, we were back in motion toward Kollam.
There were three of us packed into a sticky bench seat: Alex on the aisle side, me in the middle and a woman we did not know squished into the window. This woman began writing me notes in her pad of paper. First she asked me what my name was and where we were from. Then she asked where we were going. She pulled out a death certificate for a man who died in 2000. Turns out this was her husband and she is in significant debt to the hospital for the treatment before his death. She said "I am very poor. Please help me." I tried to pass her 100 rupees, but she refused. She slipped me a note before getting off with her bank account information and a note asking me to make monthly deposits in her account. She is in a tough situation, like many here. Her's is better than many considering she was cleanly dressed and could afford a bus ride. Even though we do not own much more than the contents of our backpacks, we are pretty damn well off. But, there is no chance I am going to help her in the way she dreams. She shares a common misconception that all if us in the West are wealthy beyond measure just waiting for a place to give away all our excess cash.
We stayed at a place in Kollam called the Ashtamudi Villas. The place is really cute, right on the banks of the Ashtamudi Lake. There was a hammock strung up between some palms and we watched fisherman and houseboats cruise by. The dude who runs the place was not much of a listener, despite his preoccupation with the reviews he wanted us to leave him on tripadvisor.com. We had our first home cooked Kerela food here, complete with fresh shreded coconut. We could tell our morale was dipping at this point because not even the idyllic setting made us perk up. We'd had a really fun time in Trivandrum, but when we hit Kollam we both felt ready to leave India. We made the decision to cut some visits from our plans and change our flights by two weeks. We will now leave India on the 14th of October. After that decision, our spirits picked back up.
We took a classic Kerela backwater cruise in a canoe boat in Monroe Island, just outside Kollam. The backwaters are a 900 km system of channeled rivers and lakes inland with water from the nearby Indian Ocean. Historically these were major transportation routes, and remain in use for some today. In the monsoon seasons they are mostly fresh water, but the rest of the year, when salt proportions return, tiger prawns are nursed and harvested.
In addition to lots of fishing, the backwaters are as much a part of agrarian India as everywhere else. Vanilla, turmeric, papaya, bananas, coconut and pineapples are grown here for sale elsewhere.
We saw several kingfishers and watched one dive and catch its lunch. They are vibrant blue and red, just like the beer lable shows 'em. They are for sure our favorite birds in India. (Eat your hearts out, peacocks. If your group were a bit quieter, you coulda had a chance.)
We took a train to Ernakulam near Kochi. We were told by the guy at our villas we could buy tickets on the train. I didn't quite believe him so we went to the counter at the station. The ticket guy also told us to buy them on the train. He told us what train and what platform, too. Maybe he should have told us what class to get into, however, because in 3AC you cannot buy tickets onboard. What you can do is play stupid foreigner, bat your eyes innocently and pay the conductor and the ticket taker a bribe to keep your good seats. At least that was possible on our day. We paid a little too much, but we had lots of space to ourselves and no fears of insane bus drivers.
By the afternoon we found ourselves in Fort Kochi, the tourist district of what was called Cochin in the British years. We stayed two nights in one hotel and then moved ourselves to Greenwoods Bethlehem. Greenwoods is run by an ultra-sweet Christian family who make everyone feel completely safe and totally at home. Our room had three sets of windows and felt like a tree house surrounded by green leaves. This was a perfect place to stay put for a week. (All except for the rooster next door that did not appear to sleep.)
We rented bikes again here and saved a lot of rupees not taking rickshaws anywhere. Alex rode Hurcules and I was on Ladybird. Both of them were too small, but we managed. We rode into Mattancherry, the town next to Kochi, through a spice trading street. The entire street smelled of cinnamon, cardamon and cumin.
Kerela was the cleanest state we've visited. People there say this is because of the education they have. Kerela has somewhere around a 95% literacy rate. This not only blows the rest of India out of the water, it is a high percentage anywhere at all, world wide. (Granted, not all literacy tests are created equal, but the list I took this from puts some states here as low as 60% and India as a whole around 77%.) The quality of life, from what we could see, is higher in Kerela compared to the other places we've visited.
We went back into Ernakulam to visit the Kerela Folklore Museum. It is a private collection of Kerelan and Indian artifacts that were very nicely presented. The upstairs has a large section on Kathakali. This is a Kerelan Hindu traditional dance that enacts stories from the Hindu holy books. One dance performance, done traditionally, can take as long as two entire days. It is performed by men. When there is a female character, the man wears a false chest with breasts and dresses like a woman. Initially we were turned off by the heavily abridged tourist versions of the dance, fearing they cut the soul out of the art's true purpose. The woman at the museum convinced me that the performers do these dances to share their culture intentionally, so our curiosity to see a show won out...
It took an entire hour for the green-faced character to fully apply his make up, even though he likely does it several times a week. The boy drummer put on the white part under his jaw line.
The dances involve complex facial expressions, especially involving eye movements, to display varying emotions. The dancers' hands form dozens of distinct mudras, all symbolizing something specific. We could see a lot of day-to-day indian culture and values threaded throughout the traditional art of dance. Culture throughout India, despite enormous variations in spoken languages and customs, is physically expressive and values emotion in all her corners.
Kerelans are proud of their harmonius religious diversity. There are Hindus and Muslims, as always. There is a big chunk of India's 3% representation of Christians here, too. And to top it off, there is a presence of antient Jewish culture here, too. We visited the Pardesi Synagogue, but photos were forbidden there. It was originally built in the 16th century. The church above, St. Francis Church was originally built by the Portugese in the 16th century. It was converted to Anglican when the Dutch took over colonial power later that century. When they have services it is standing room only inside. We have never seen a church so packed.
We squeezed in two Kerelan cooking lessons in one day. First we witnessed the finess with which our hostess, Sheeba, could multitask in the dark to whip up fish curry, dal, cabbage, tomato curry, chapati and a pancake in a flash. The power was out at the time and to spare us all the inferno of a tropical kitchen lit with candles, she did not waste a second. Then we ate it all upstairs on the roof top. Delicious.
In the evening we went to Leelu's house and had a cooler, slower and more intensive session learning to make vegetable fry, thoran and sambar. I am especially excited about the sambar. This is the spicy stew that is eaten with dosas, thin, crispy south indian bread. That day we ate three home cooked meals and discovered the secret to Kerelan food is...coconut!
We pushed Hurcules and Lady Bird to the limit taking them on a 50km semi off-road ride across Vypeen Island to Cherai beach one sunny day. First we boarded a ferry along with cars, motorbikes and people to cross over to the island. The round trip for the two of us and our bikes was a whopping $0.20.
The first 10 km were freaky. The road was loud and crowded and since we are familiar with how bus drivers opperate, we did not enjoy having them and their over-amplified horns breathing down our necks. Luckily, the second half of the trip was on a quiet road between the coast and fishing village homes. The bikes survived mud, sand and water. We had lovely views of backwater and the greetings of lots of locals happy to wave hello to foreigners.
We said goodbye to clean and green Kerela. With only ten more days in India, we wasted no time in transit and flew off to our nex stop. Lonely Planet calls it the "Lourve of India." We'll see.
Lots of calins et bisous!
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