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Trivandrum
Keralan style houses along the bathing tank First of all I would like to thank everybody for their positive reactions on my last blog! Of course, this puts the pressure on me to produce something similar... Luckily I have never been ambitious, so let’s just say that for now the last blog was the pinnacle of my blogging career... It will be back to story telling again... Anyway, a poem every blog will become boring too!! So here it comes...
Trivandrum, it is a place I have heard of for a long time, my father used to work there and though I never visited in those days a picture formed in my mind of the city... I like the name, obsolete though it is, since they have Indianised it and made it terrible long and unpronounceable... It conjures up images in my mind of exotic beauty, palm trees swinging in the wind... Strangely, the picture I had in my mind turned out to be remarkable similar to what I actually encountered! In my mind I saw a town with wooden structures, red tiled roofs and lots of palm trees and other trees sticking above the roofs. In reality, this is just what Trivandrum is, at least parts
Trivandrum
Puthe Maliga Palace
of it are. It has loads of green in the form of shaded roads and manicured parks and it has still got a lot of charm in the form of the old Keralan style wooden houses, with red tiled roofs! Maybe the picture in my mind was formed by the stories that my father told and the postcards he send home, thought I don't quite remember the postcards...
Back in those days, I think my father used to go to Kovalam in the weekends, I am sure I have an old postcard of a beach which probably is Kovalam. It wasn't a tourist resort then of course, but now it is, so I headed for Varkala, situated on top of cliffs below which are beaches interspersed by rocky outcrops. It is very picturesque and as it was off season it was also pleasantly laid back. It was just what I needed, some rest and relaxation, just strolling along the cliffside path, or sitting in one of the few open restaurants watching the sunset and the fishing boats... It was also an informative break, I learned that even when you think an eel is down and out, after it has
Trivandrum
Close up of the roof been smacked several times on the hard soil and is gasping for water, it is very unwise to put your foot on it! Not my foot of course, it was a young Indian chap trying to show off, well the eel showed him alright, within seconds of putting his foot on the eel, it had turned around and taken a swipe at his big toe! The poor guy looked quite flabbergasted! In his reaction he almost kicked the eel into my face, but my super fast ninja reactions saved me!!
Having had quite my fill of snapping eels being thrown in my face I decided to make my way to Munnar using among other things the public ferry system so I would be able see something of the backwaters without blowing my budget! I am quite happy with my choice of the public ferry as it took me through a variety of different watery landscapes, ranging from big waterways to lakes to small canals... Along the way I got to see those tourists who are fortunate enough to be able to afford a houseboat, it looked quite comfortable indeed! But my ferry ride was for me just as good,
Trivandrum
Another feature on the Palace
I met a lot of nice people and most likely saw more or less the same as what you get to see on a backwater tour only faster I guess... I was very satisfied and that is what it's all about in the end!
So back to Munnar... I liked Munnar, if only because of the hills and the tea estates surrounding it... I love walking among the tea plantations, it brings back memories. Some of my earliest memories are from staying in an old planter’s house on top of a hill among the Sri Lankan tea plantations. I remember the immaculate lawn, with the morning dew on the grass and the smell of fresh naan for breakfast! That and the sight of headless chicken trying to fly over a fence at a nearby slaughterhouse (well it wasn't that near, but as kids you always love exploring and so my brother and sister and I somehow stumbled upon it)... While I love to walk around tea estates, I don't have any such affinity with slaughterhouses... I suppose in a certain way, that when I am up there walking through the tea gardens I am perhaps trying to find that
Trivandrum
Palace garden ideal place of my youth, the perfect memory, which becomes greener and fresher as time goes by... I don't think I would ever want to see the place where we stayed in Sri Lanka for real, it could never live up to my expectations and I would be disappointed. It's better if it remains a distant but beautiful memory.
As Munnar is in the hills and it is supposedly the rainy season, it means you should expect some rain. And rain it did, though I was lucky enough to have one long morning of sunshine. My memories washed away with the rain and it was time to move on... To Kochi this time, a place where travelers and traders have been going for centuries and who am I not to follow in their footsteps!
Kochi used to be Dutch once, we took it from the Portuguese and the British took it from us! I always find it funny to walk the streets of cities like Kochi, knowing that a few hundred years ago, my fellow country men walked those same streets and they did it without the use of guidebooks or the pleasures of a banana pancake in
Trivandrum
Napier house in the Zoological Gardens
the morning! I always wonder what drove them to go, some no doubtebly were coerced into going, but some might have gone out of curiosity or sheer adventure, just like so many a backpacker today. What did they see? How did they find it? And were they overcharged? Judging by the Dutch cemetery and the tombstones in St. Fransiscus church, a lot died... No vaccinations in those days! They probably treated the locals very badly, though they did rebuild the local synagogue after the Portuguese had destroyed it, so a bit of Dutch tolerance was already present in those days.
I will end this blog with a quote I rather like: "There are only two things in this life I hate, people who are intolerant of other cultures and the Dutch!"
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