Don't Step on the Bugs, Jain.

19th March 2013

They call Kerala “God’s Own Country”. Well at least the “Welcome to Kerala” signs on the roads in do. It is a state of India that hugs the southwest corner. The locals appreciate the beauty and diversity they are surrounded by, hence the tagline, and in fact, many other Indians desire holidays here when long weekends permit.

The toughest kids in town often decorated bikes with flowers.

Our entry point into the region was Kochi, and you get the impression that things are different here from the fact that there is an airport with shiny floors and a semblance of order with sparkling clean buildings and the lack of a baggage trolley graveyard; a corner of the airport entry where broken trolleys (i.e., all of them that have ever existed) are dumped, a la Chennai airport. The airport is about a billion miles from where we actually wanted to be, so we decided on the more expensive door-to-door transfer as opposed to public transport  (which in Kerala state we were to find out often consists of air conditioned environmentally friendly buses). Things didn’t get off to a great start. A few miles out of town, the cabbie received a telephone call from the taxi counter at the airport. He duly passed the phone to me where I was informed by the clerk that I had left my travel wallet on the counter and would I like to come back and retrieve them. I thought I probably should, as it contained our passports, credit cards and a few thousand rupees in spending money.

The river spider would find his way towards the tasty human treat

Later that night, documents in tact, we were in Fort Cochin, a slow paced kinda place (slow paced in India means less than fifteen thousand people and forty cows on the main street in town at any one time) first discovered by the Portuguese over five hundred years ago and with an added history of Dutch colonialism as well.  We stayed in a lovely guesthouse that exemplified the friendly attitude we have come to known Indians for towards guests.

There are quite a few sights in town; the usual suspects of churches and temples but one sight that took our interest was the local laundry. This is a huge outdoor collective washing site, where local hotels and guesthouses send their bed sheets and pillow cases for locals to wash for about fifty cents a pop by soaking in diverted creek water and bashing the dirt out of them on the concrete compounds in the laundry area. Its been a local tradition here for centuries so we thought we might as well drop our shirts and undies off while we were here and get some washing and ironing done too.

Cooking classes. Taking notes and letting someone else do the work made the student very happy

One day, just one day, someone would mix the colours and be very angry

The chinese fishing nets would need a miracle in this position

The same day our hired rickshaw driver took us to a Jain Temple. Jains seem to be the ever so peaceful people who see themselves as harmful to bugs, and in fact live on a passive co-existence with them and never crush them. They also love the flying rats of society, pigeons, and daily for lunch there is a call for all the hundreds and thousands of birds to gather by the temple for a free feed of rice, ironically, dangerous for birds to eat.

When developed, the pictures would show many white blotches

The Victorian Taxi driver training academy

Fort Cochin is steaming. The temperatures and humidity are high and unbearable. Add to this the location by the sea and backwaters, which attracts the fiercest and most annoying of mosquitos, and you have yourself quite the uncomfortable situation at times. We finally broke the India beer drought though. During one sticky afternoon where our thirsts could not longer be quenched by lassis alone, we were led to a bar; or really just a small room with an icebox, and ordered a beer. To our absolute horror, a Fosters lager, the worlds most tasteless and horrible beer, was placed on our table. Are you fucking kidding us? Unfortunately the Kingfishers were warm today, so we quickly necked the Aussie crap and disguised ourselves as we left the premises. Luckily, further on in Kerala we did find the real thing.

The magic curry left many in a haze

Such is the diversity of Kerala state that in a few hours you can be in a totally different environment, thus being the tea plantations and hill stations of Munnar. This being India, the few hour journey actually took seven, a twisty, winding bus ride up the mountains on a bus that probably should have taken its last fare in 1956. But the prize at the end of the road was the solitude and peace and quiet of an old British Hill Station, set up in colonial times as getaways for the well to do. We had gone from dusty, chaotic streets to narrow channels that separated the abundant lush green tea plantations. We sat for a couple of days on the veranda of our guesthouse, admittedly this was in part to having a bed that was essentially a miniscule slice of foam on a wooden plank, but the serenity was priceless, and something to be taken advantage of in this noisy country. The area is not without its excitement, however. Pedestrians are banned from walking around the plantation area after 8pm due to the possibility of an encounter with a wild elephant or boar, or even a porcupine. At 8.30pm one night after dinner down the road from our guesthouse, we walked home in the darkness with just our torches hoping to either spot or me mauled by one of these creatures but were left disappointed when they decided to no-show.

The Indian Javelin team had limited success in London, for obvious reasons

The hippies enjoyed the lack of helicopters in the area

The rickshaw was terrible at hide and seek

Kerala is all about backwaters. Its world famous for the canals and waterways that line the state just inside the coast.  And with these waters go houseboats, a fine way to spend a day and night. Simply and traditionally made from bamboo and wood, we hired one for about $70, which we had all to ourselves, including a guide who’s main job was to tell us that there is fish in the water, and a chef to cook those fish as well as two crewmen who rowed and steered the vessel with giant bamboo sticks. We peacefully meandered along the canals and watery by-ways of Kerala, past local fisherman communities, some of whom still use the arachnid-like mammoth Chinese nets, which hulk over the waters edge and crane down for their catch, which is usually one or two snapper, a couple of sardines, a rubber boot and a kilo of plastic.

Before dinner we settled down to a couple of ice-cold beers (Kingfisher this time!), as we watched the sun disappear into the jungles that envelope the backwaters. Approaching storm clouds swallowed the stifling humidity and the skies opened soon after. The heavy rain was too much for our bamboo craft, and the water made its way underneath the reeds covering the roof to the joinery work. The exit point was the foot of our bed, and it looked like we would be spending the night on the riverbank in a guesthouse, therefore dampening our experience, pardon the pun. But no sooner had we packed up and set up in the room, when the skies cleared and all remained was some flashy lightning. We decided to get back on board and spend the rest of our experience there. The crew had replaced all the wet sheets and we spent a very comfy night in our air-conditioned bamboo boat.

Houseboat driver and his steering stick. Much easier watching this

The giant sombrero protected from the harshest sun

The next morning, with the humidity picking up from where it left off the evening before the storm, we packed our things and landed ashore, and sweated to the local station for our first experience of the one thing that sums up India, a ride on a train.

They say 17 million people use Indian trains every day. Obviously, this is just on one of them. You often see images of people on roofs as trains puff along, as they are unable to squeeze any more bodies into a carriage. Thanks to a few bodies not making their destination due to the odd electrocution, this sight may be a thing of the past but they are still packed inside. And here’s why; the railway company sells out all the seats on board and then re sells them as general tickets without reservations, so you cramp yourself in for the long-haul or hope that some family of seventeen sharing a six berth area will allow you to crush into their limited space.

Indian train stations, rat free currently.

We were heading to Calicut, a five-hour journey north. We managed to only get the cheap tickets about 130 rupees, or $2 each. This was in the sleeper cabin, which is quite a misnomer, as yes, there are sleeper beds, but they are hardly inviting and each bed generally contains up to three bodies. Miraculously, with backpacks, we managed to find one spare bench and settle down uncomfortably to watch the countryside and Indian travel life go by. We passed the time by counting the amount of plastic bottles or food wrappers hurled out the windows, which resembled jail cells, by the local passengers or played spotto on the hoiking, spitting men and women of 21997 to Calicut.

A few hours into the journey we were reminded by a local that we had taken his seat, so we had to pack our things and wander to another seemingly poorer part of the train, where Kylie shared a bench with an old men while trying to avoid the constant stares of young girls across the aisle from her. Meanwhile, I was holed up on an upper sleeper bench somewhere behind our bags. This time, I didn’t have a window to look out of, and this robbed me of the opportunity to count rats at the stations, who danced merrily on the rails between the tracks as they devoured the food scraps discarded by thoughtful and generous locals.

Our guidebook rates an Indian train journey as the number one tourist experience in India. Lonely Planet can get fucked.

Calicut was the means to another journey, simply a train to bus connection elsewhere. The attraction in these parts is the Wayanad National Park and surrounds. The parks are heavy on wildlife, such as spotted deer, elephants and the occasional tiger, as well as troupes of lousy monkeys. We had spoken to many Indians, including those useless enough to be in tourist offices in many towns, about our plans to visit and they all agreed it is indeed a place worth checking out. What they failed to mention is that the park is closed for two months from the 1^st March onwards due to fire prevention. We found this out when we got to a place called Sulthan Bathery, a shithole of a small town close to the park boundaries. We only made it this far as we missed the stop for our original shithole town, Kalpetta, 30km back down the road. 

The super red bus, air conditioned without windows.

The journey up was death defying and frightening, as well as adventurous. Indian bus drivers are not known for their lack of ability or patience, and we had the crème de la crème this night. In darkness, with rain falling, on another bus that had seen many better days, probably sixty years ago when the tyres in use now had their original tread. The bus hurtled up mountain roads, careering carelessly around hairpin bends close to hubcap high barriers that were the only protection from a thousand metre drop into the forest below. We passed a motorcyclist who had slammed into the railing and nearly met his ultimate fate. We arrived safe, finally, and kissed the dirty ground in thanks. With darkness well and truly set, we found an overpriced hotel; one of those that spend all their money on fancy foyers and none on rooms, and bedded down for the night, just after we were told by the staff of the closure of the national park. The day got shittier when my butter chicken dish I ordered from the hotel restaurant wasn’t the orange colour I desire most but a mustardy yellow and with bones. Such is travel; things don’t always go to plan. We went to bed and re-organised our plans for the next few days, starting to a visit to the local caves high above the valley the next morning. A lovely guide there told us about all the animals we could have seen had we have come before March, when the park was open.  Bastard.

Soon, he would reach our for the camera, once the bananas were all gone