Ludwig's Odyssey: February 2015

After a very relaxing time in Varkala, making new friends as well as seeing old ones we departed for Thiruvananthapuram (Trivandrum) in an Ambassador, the quintessential Indian Taxi (which until this point we had not been in and quite a comfy ride despite people telling us otherwise) to catch our last train in India for Madurai.

We decided to treat ourselves to a posh hotel for our last two days in India - around £25 a night which would easily be £100+ for the equivalent back in Europe.

It was nice to do some touristy things after being on the beach and we thoroughly enjoyed visiting the Temple complex and Palace of Madurai.
The Temple complex is so colourful and architecturally interesting besides being a very important pilgrimage site for Hindus.
There was even an Elephant blessing pilgrims/worshippers with his trunk, for a small fee of course ;-)
Madurai has a nice vibe we felt, typically Indian but no hassle and quite clean too, a good place to say farewell to India.

So our lasting impressions of India:-
Indians love to sing at any given moment.
Indians always want to ask you where you come from and many want your photo.
Colourful temples and amazing palaces.
Lots of nature to be seen especially all the Egrets and Kites.
Beautiful colourful clothes that the women wear and they love their gold.
Thalis, Massala Chai on the train and South Indian Food, although funnily enough the food could have been a little spicier.
Trains filled to bursting especially in the north.
Auto Rickshaws (tuk-tuks) buzzing around everywhere like mosquitoes, fun to ride in but good bargaining essential to get a decent price.
Crazy roads and crazy driving - to our western eyes anyway, they seem to have a system that works for them, as long as you have a horn you’ll be ok.
Of course, the ubiquitous cows in the roads which unfortunately doesn’t improve the air quality and perhaps should be in fields grazing on grass rather than eating plastic from the rubbish dumps, in fairness many people give the street cows food but i’m not sure chapati dough is the best for them.
Happy beach dogs, mangy city dogs.
The really negative point for us was too much rubbish and pollution everywhere, most have no understanding of how plastic affects their environment but the government is trying to educate people so hopefully the next generations will realise the impact of throwing rubbish out of the train/bus window etc..
It’s a beautiful country, so diverse and rich in culture and colour, unfortunately it’s not all Bollywood yet so don’t be fooled.

From Varkala to Madurai

Madurai

So we reluctantly left the lovely beaches of Goa after a month or so. My foot was better and i no longer needed the crutches and it was also time to go and visit Kerala to see the wonderful sites it has to offer.

Looking back at my experience on crutches, I was not the only one to have or be in need of them. Many a tourist did I see hobbling about, no doubt after having too much fun on the beach. I did however manage to pass them on to a needy tourist.

We had to take a couple of buses back from Patnem to Margao so we could catch a train to Calicut in Kerala and on the first bus happened to see a young Israeli Girl. At first we didn’t realise her predicament, it was only once she got off the bus and tried to hobble to another that we realised she was holding on to one of her friends shoulders for support with one hand and in the other holding a bit of bamboo cane which wasn’t up to the job. We were just getting onto another bus when I quickly ran (well when I say quickly…) towards her and gave her my crutches. She gave a big smile and a thank you but was also in some shock as to what to say to me, understandably I guess, how many people come running towards you with crutches just when you need them. My samaritan work finished for the day, I got back on the bus to get to our destination.

The next day we got the train to Calicut to then get to the Wayanad district. We arrived in Calicut to find that there was some school festival on so most of the places were full, but we did manage to find an overpriced place for the night… deep joy!

The following morning we took a bus to Kalpetta, the bus meandered up through the Western Ghats and offered some fantastic mountain scenery. We checked in to the place we had had in mind for the next 3 nights.

After a brief sleep on the first night, we got up early around 4.30am to start our tour of the local sites. We went off in a Jeep for the next 8 hours or so with two American Sisters, Cammie and Katie who we got on with really well. First stop the Wildlife Sanctuary where if we were lucky we would see a wild elephant. After a couple of chais we went into the sanctuary and to be honest there wasn’t much around save huge termite mounds and a few deer. Just as we were coming to the end, we got lucky, a male elephant came towards us across the road, brilliant! Our expectations had been so low that it was a real treat to see a real wild one. We also saw another in the distance around 5 minutes later but he was difficult to see without binoculars.

Mission accomplished we then were taken around to see an old Jain Temple, Elephant Mountain on the way to a cave as it was called with pre-historic markings (wasn’t really a cave, more like a shelter high up in the mountain), some coffee, tea and cardamon plantations and finally a waterfall.

It was a really fun day and we were glad to do the tour.

The next day we decided to go to a nearby lake and take a walk which was nice enough. We saw some big spiders, more monkeys and also lots of Indians pedaloing around the lake. Wendy found it most amusing to watch the ladies in their beautiful saris having to pedal around with life jackets on.

After a few hours we headed back to Kalpetta and visited the flower show! Well more like a village fete with flowers. For those of you whom have been to the Laughton Show it was similar to that with random stalls selling everything and nothing but without the steam engines and old cars.

We headed back to Calicut the next day to take a train to Kochi. A fun journey of bus, walk, train, rickshaw, ferry and another rickshaw.

The ferry was the Ernakulam to Fort Kochi service costing 4 Rupees each (4p) for a 15 /20 minute journey, nearly broke the budget that one ;-)

Kochi is a delightful place with lots of old colonial buildings, churches and palaces left behind by previous occupiers such as the Portuguese, Dutch, British and I guess also the Chinese as they use Chinese fishing nets here. It’s a mix of India meets the Med and other cultures.

Being a relatively small place, it was easy to walk around everyday and we did quite a lot of that during our 4 days here.

I had the best coffee for a long long time here. It is very difficult to find decent coffee in India as not many places have a coffee machine.

On our second day, we met up with our American friends again, Cammie and Katie and ventured to the Tea Pot to have high tea (how English) we had Indian Rarebit which is nothing like Welsh Rarebit of course, It seemed to be rolled up and deep fried! tasty though.

In fact it was so good there, we went back a couple of days later to eat their cheesecake, yum!

After 4 days of drinking great coffee, off we went again towards the fabled backwaters.

We decided to first stop at Kumarakom as this was near a bird sanctuary for a couple of nights. We booked in to a lovely homestay and were fed a wonderful thali and Indian Breakfast of Idli and sambar. The room we stayed in was very comfortable and also had air con. We decided to treat ourselves as the place we stayed at in Kochi had none and the only window we had was small offering little fresh air. Being hot and humid in Kerala, the ceiling fan was just circulating hot air all night, sticky!

All was going well at the home stay, peaceful location with a nice secluded garden but then the music started…

We were opposite a church and it turns out they had a harvest festival on. That in itself is not an issue you would think but this is India..

They had mounted a speaker on a lamppost pointing directly at our place and turned the music up to 11. You couldn’t sit in the garden and talk to each other it was that loud. There was a dance at 7.30 each night for a few hours which is fair enough but they insisted on doing some sound check or just playing the dammed music at 5.30 in the morning, midday an also 4 in the afternoon for about 1hr or so. Crazy! and they seemed to only have about 4 songs which they had on repeat…

Anyway, it had the desired affect on the first morning we woke up there as we wanted to get up early anyway to go to the bird sanctuary before it got too hot.

The bird sanctuary was nothing special, nice enough as was the butterfly garden but we didn’t see anything new.

The following day we took a ferry across the lake and a bus down to Alleppey.

Again we booked a nice homestay room in Alleppey and the people there were so friendly and helpful. Lovely Indian breakfast again and they also organised our Backwaters tour on canoe.

We had thought about hiring a houseboat for an overnight tour but in the end decided on the day canoe experience which was much cheaper and also allowed us to go into the small canals which the big houseboats can’t get down.

It was really worth it, there are so many big houseboats on the main canals now, it’s like the M25!

We got a ferry bus to where the canoe adventure would start which was at a local family’s home. Once there we were treated to some Idlis for breakfast and after that, off we went in our little canoe for four hours or so.

We stopped to drink some coconut water after a while. A man sort of macheted it open and came back with it after a few minutes, all opened ready to drink with straws, tasty but very rich.

We then continued on for another couple of hours, having a go at rowing ourselves, well actually, our rower told us to help him wade through the thick soup of Water Hyacinths that clog the smaller canals. It was hard work and we had some shelter from the sun, our rower man was sweating buckets with his tea towel on his head, poor sod!

We returned to base for a thali lunch which was well needed for our little effort.

After lunch, another hour or so of canoeing took us to the drop off point where we walked through some paddy fields to get a ferry back into Alleppey.

The following day, there was a general strike/protest in Kerala because of the recent partial alcohol ban in the state. It’s much harder for locals to get their booze now. Because of this, the streets of Alleppey were empty of traffic. If you’ve ever come to India in recent years, you will know how busy the streets are, so this was a surreal experience.

The strike meant no transport so we couldn’t move on till the following day, no real hardship as it gave us time to plan.

Strike over, we took 3 buses to get to Verkala, a lovely peaceful beach resort.

Being so close to the equator, the sun here is really hot and powerful between 11am and 3pm, even for us and we love sunning-it-up.

So we’re based here till the 16th winding down from our Indian adventure, then off to Madurai to catch our plane to Sri Lanka on the 18th.

Wayanad