Kerala was beautiful, peaceful and in a sense very different from the India of the north. Not a slum (that I saw), and rarely a beggar it’s one of the wealthiest and most equal states and for that, and for whatever other reasons (low season?) it made a calm change. Still, they’re all filthy communists down there so they must be doing something wrong...
I arrived, after 30 hours of intense and train bound reading; dissertation work; and lying in my little bed, as Monday was dawning in Ernakulum and made my way to Fort Cochin. After a great deal of persuasion, my auto driver took me to the home stay I was looking for and after waiting a couple of hours for the room I checked in and passed out. For the first time in India I was in a room of my own. Amazing.
The next few days were spent generally obeying the lonely planet (or, as Rishi et al call it, the white guide) in all things, after getting a copy from one of the many people on the verge of leaving India. Kerala is apparently where you go at the end, not halfway through, but of course without the guidebook I wasn’t to know this. I felt very shoddy. Madness of madnesses (though I should have learnt by now) I met a a girl who had graduated in 2006 from University college on the first day and the week was full of French people, Danish, Irish, English, Dutch... Every European you can imagine as well as the occasionally Indian person.
Day one was spent exploring the shops and lanes, visiting the synagogue and the fishing nets and learning how to get around. This involved some cautious rickshaw driving of my own, something I got to do in exchange for visiting just two giftshops! (I managed to get him down from three) Apparently the drivers have something like a scam going on where they get petrol in exchange for bringing in tourists whether or not the tourists buy a thing. As a result you can travel for free in Fort Cochin if you can resist when it comes to shop owners. They only got me once but I in the end I developed a fairly effective if crude tactic - asking if they had an absurdly obscene sculpture I’d seen in a temple (they never did but I honestly would have bought it if they had!) and then if they still wouldn’t let me leave I’d just start describing it. It worked quite well really...
The second day was spent on a houseboat and canoe in the backwaters near Alleppey, the night spent on a little cooking course in the course of which I learnt why you apparently don’t let French or Israeli people stay at your hotel. A startling piece of wisdom but one shared by both our teacher who ran a home stay and two of the pupils (who believe it or not owned hotels in France...) Wednesday I picked up a Dane named Klaus at the bus station and headed into the mountains near Munnar. Real god damn rainforest, waterfalls valleys and mountain views; it was incredible and as there aren’t glass windows – just shutters – on Keralan buses I spent most of the time excitedly sticking my head into the rain.
Munnar claims to be some of the highest tea plantations in the world. I’m not too sure what this means considering there are places like Darjeeling in the Himalayas but no matter. TEA! There was a lot of tea. And it grows in a satisfyingly beautiful way considering the joy of the thing. Dinner, a little look around and an auto guy to take us to some kind of surreptitious backroom bar to purchase some beverages (strict licencing can make a beer hard to find in kerala) and the day was done. The next day we hiked through the butterflies and trees at Chinnar but it was sadly devoid of wildlife beyond a single huge cobra. The elephants, as is their way, always one step ahead... Friday it was all coming to a close and I set out early to return to Cochin for my Saturday train. Arriving back I went for lunch with some people I met on the ferry, found a new home stay, got a scorcher of a thirty rupee haircut and had dinner with a random French family. In the morning I rose at 5 am and caught a ferry, sun rising over India, back to the mainland for the train north. 32 hours later I was back in Pune and exchanging stories with Harry and Dave who’d spent the last couple of days in the village they’re working in. Two hours walk from the nearest road and no mains electricity. They still manage to have flat screen tvs in some houses apparently though, I will have to visit...
Anyway, a Phaltan post is in the works – it was an amazing weekend, after that I might write something more general about life in Pune. I will be faster, if anyone can find me a job starting in November and finish my dissertation for me : ).
