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Published: April 23rd 2006
Blog by Bronia From
Goa and the beaches our journey continued south through the tiny province of
Karnataka and into the province of
Kerala.
Kerala is famous for its 'backwaters' - a series of lakes, canals, rivers and lagoons divided by narrow strips of land, paddy fields, coconut groves and villages built on dykes. For visitors the popular thing to do here is to hire a houseboat or hop on one of the many ferries and wind along the waterways at a snails pace watching village life pass you by.
Here again, due to it's coastal location, it's history is steeped in european colonialism with Dutch, English and Portuguese homes everywhere as well as Muslim and Jewish influences as it was a key centre of ivory and spice trade for at least 3000 years. The Portuguese explorer, Vasco da Gama, arrived here in 1498 and that was the start of European trade.
To get to Kerala we took two trains, the first being a local train with rush-hour commuters sitting on hardback benches with multiple fans blowing to cool the un-airconditionned carriage. We were the only tourists on this train and therefore an object of much
Getting out of bed & bumping head on a 3 A/C train
Bad picture but it gives you an idea of what the train accommodation is like! Bronia is in the middle of 3 bunks on top of one another.curiosity as our backpacks (of which we have 4 that zip into 2) filled the aisles.
We then transferred to our sleeper train and for the first time we rode in 3 A/C (3rd Class, Air Conditionned) as our usual 2 A/C was fully booked. 3 A/C is much the same as 2 A/C only there is less room as you are in a stack of three bunks, therefore six people per compartment rather than the usual two stacked bunks & four people. It felt like something of a comedy act as we climbed aboard as it was already past 10pm and most of the travellers had boarded at previous stations and claimed all available luggage storage and put themselves to bed with the provided blanket, sheet and pillow turning out the lights to fall asleep.
At 10pm, we climb aboard - a pack on our back, a pack on our front, stumbling down the aisle and squinting in the darkness for our alloted bed number.
"Ooops, sorry - oh - ooops - sorry" was the repeated phrase as we bumped against heads, feet and various other limbs of people that had been in deep sleep until our
Oldest European Church in India - Cochin
This is where Vasco da Gama was originally buried before his remains were moved back to Lisbon, Portugal. packs knocked them wide awake. There was some confusion when we realised that our allocated comfortable bottom bunks had been claimed by two Indian women who had obviously climbed on board, seen that our slots hadn't yet been claimed and settled down for the night leaving their upper and middle bunks for us to claim once we boarded (see pics).
We arrived in
Cochin/Ernakulam the next morning and stepping out of the air-conditionned carriage you could feel that we were journeying south. Heat and humidity combined with the weight of our packs meant that the short walk from the station to the tuk-tuk ranks left us dripping with sweat. We got a tuk-tuk from the mainland over a few bridges and islands to the narrow peninsula of Fort Cochin, the more picturesque and historical area. After booking into
Hotel Chiramel which was spotless, clean and had a lovely homely feel we set out to explore the town.
Fort Cochin/Kochi is lovely - long winding avenues of shaded trees interspersed with narrow alleys of art shops, cafés, tourist shops and travel agencies selling backwater houseboat trips with water and the coast only ever a few minutes away.
We
Playing fields full of young boys playing cricket
If you look closely you can see the multiple games on one field happening simultaneously - it's incredible to see! watched the fascinating 'Chinese Fishing Nets' which look like giant daddy-long legs with square nets that are lowered by a system of cantilever weights (the weights being giant stones that the fisherman have found nearby) into the water offshore and laid on the bottom of the sea until their are raised to reveal whatever has crawled or swum into the square net.
Leather beaten faces of fishermen smiled at us and offered to show us the nets and their catches as we walked by. The idea is for you to buy a fish and then take it to a nearby restaurant to have it cooked straight away for you.
We visited the St Francis Church which was constructed in 1503 (see pic) by the Portuguese Franciscan friars and is said to be India's oldest European-built church. It was here that Portuguese explorer Vasco da Gama was buried here for 14 years before his remains were taken back to Lisbon. It was an interesting church to visit for Bronia due to the family visits and visits she has had with Lisbon, Portugal.
On one of the days we decided to hire a rickshaw driver (see pic of Dave
Chinese fishing nets in Cochin harbour
Chinese nets work on a cantilever system - the net is lowered & then 4 men & the weight of rocks pull the catch up from the seabed by the shore with our driver) to take us around some of the sights. We stopped at an impressive Catholic Basilica Santa Cruz with impressive oil paintings, a Jain temple with a sweet man who gave us the history of the Jewish Quarter and the arrival of the Jains, a Dutch Palace and the Jewish Quarter itself that is now a hub of antique and repro furniture that left us wanting to hire a lorry and spending the rest of our travel budget on furniture for which we have no house to put it in!!
Somehow we don't think that Dave's parents who are currently being absolute gems and storing all our worldly possessions would have been too pleased with the arrival of a chest of drawers, bookcase, chairs, cabinets on their driveway !!!
We made a fascinating stop to a Ginger warehouse which was an old Dutch spice building with a large inner courtyard. As we entered the large courtyard in the midday sun, ginger lay en masse in the sunshine to dry and the smell was intoxicating. We wandered into some of the darkened storerooms and watched the men and women use age-old techniques dating back from the 1500's
Fisherman on Chinese fishing net - Cochin
This fishing net is currently lowered to catch. of hand sorting the ginger pieces by shaking a sieve back and forth (see pic) and then loading the various grades into hessian bags to be weighed for shipping.
In order to understand a bit more about the Keralan culture and the south Indian history we decided to go one evening to watch a
Kathakali performance.
Kathakali began around the time of Shakespeare and literally translated is a 'story play'. It is a Hindu performance and using their gods in various forms covers all the themes of good/evil, courage/frailty, war/peace etc. Drummers and singers are the background to the actors who mime the movements with hand and facial expressions. Like in Shakespeare's time, the actors are men and part of the performance is watching the application of the makeup to transform them into women and gods (see pic of makeup application).
Whilst waiting for the
Kathakali to start we decided to order a drink. Dave ordered a beer. He was brought a mug and a teapot. About to complain that he hadn't ordered a pot of tea he peered in and sure enough inside was his bottle of beer decanted. The waiter quickly whispered,
"Temple" and we understood.
In India, if you are within about 2km of a temple, or you don't have a liquor licence - you can't serve alcohol - so, to get around it, restaurents often bring mugs to the table and hide your bottle under the table so you can pour it inconspicuously. The teapot was a new addition to this performance and worthy we felt of a pic (below). The funny thing is, everyone knows that the mugs hold beer, so it's not a particularly cunning disguise !!
From
Fort Cochin/Kochi we travelled to
Allappey/Alappuzha which was in brief: hot, humid and full of mosquitos. We hired a houseboat for two for a 24hr boat trip round the backwaters. Our houseboat was complete with captain, skipper and cook and had a front canopied deck and a bathroom/shower plus double bedroom. Very plush and comfy and a big treat.
The Houseboat trip was great - we spent the day cruising up canals into large lagoons, stopping for lunch and being served fabulous Indian curry dishes with rice followed by fresh pineapple. Delicious.
The images of the life we saw as we passed are captured in the attached photos: canoes laden with
Drying ginger in an old colonial Dutch spice building
The different colours are the different preservation methods. wares pushed along by polemen, families crossing canals with their shopping, bicycles and other wares; men women and children bathing in the canal surrounded by floating weeds, ducks and other wildlife.
We'll never forget the rhymthic and constant sounds of the wet thud of laundry being beaten against the rocks and walls of the canals as we passed, nor of the squeals of delight by the children as they ran down the waterways shouting to us to throw them school pens, chocolate and to wave as we took off into the distance. From the palm trees, tanoy systems blared out Indian music and chants which made it feel as if you were listening to a neighbour with their radio turned up too loudly - but all of it blended into to a cacophony of sound which made us smile and realise how fabulously lucky we were to be sitting there and secretly listening to the sounds of private lives mixing together across the water.
On April 1st, we caught a two-decked public ferry boat the size of a small fishing boat from
Allappey to
Kollam/Quilon. It was an 8 hour ferry trip and we spent the day sitting
on the top deck reading our books, chatting with other tourists heading down the same southern route as us, and watching village life pass us by. On board we met a English/Irish couple in their 1st week in India and planning on spending 3mths here. They asked us for tips, what we liked and didn't and we looked at one another and laughed and said,
"Some days you'll love it, some days you'll hate it and you'll come away thinking it was an incredible experience" Disembarking at
Kollam it was by now evening and as the reports from other travellers about
Kollam hadn't been that inspiring we moved on straight away taking a tuk-tuk to
Varkala. We booked into
Kerala Bamboo Huts recommended by Sid & Kerry who we'd met in Dharamsala some weeks ago. Good choice guys and many thanks ! - It was spectacular and we were sad to only spend three nights there.
Varkala is a dramatic cliff-top setting with a lovely beach hemmed in by the cliffs that surround it. We spent a little time on the beach but with the approach of the monsoon season only a few weeks away the daytime heat
Dave with one of the many tuk-tuk drivers we used in India
This driver in particular drove us around Cochin to see the sights. and humidity often proved too much for us and so we sought sanctuary in cafés with fans and the minimum of three daily cold showers to keep cool.
Each day, as we sat in a café profusely perspiring without moving a muscle, we watched Indian fisherman go out to sea in a long wooden canoe and drag a net out. The would leave the net some few hundred metres out to see and row back into shore. About 30-40 men would then hold the sides of the net from the shore and chanting in unison they would pull the net as if playing tug-o-war with the sea pulling the net in. We'd seen this type of fishing in Goa before but never on this scale and it was fascinating to watch (see pic) though how they did it in the heat of the day whilst we wilted in the shade we don't know.
On our return to our bamboo hut one evening we coincidentally ran into Immo & Katya, the lovely German couple, who you may remember from our previous Goa blog we had met in Hampi and were in the same set of huts as we were.
We immediately set a dinner date and had such a good time that evening that we spent the next evening dining together as well (see pic).
April 4th was our flight to
Colombo, Sri Lanka so that morning we took a taxi to the airport at
Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram) airport. We travelled by Ambassador car, which if you don't know are the old colonial style cars once used by the British and still made in Calcutta.
We drove down the #47 highway, the main road linking the south of India to the north passing the morning traffic which included elephants, some in the back of trucks/pickups with the suspension severely under strain as the elephants stood, trunks over the cab of the truck and ears flapping in the wind. What an image to leave India with - what a country.
See you in our next blog from Sri Lanka!
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Nonie
non-member comment
My Grandfather's home
Hey B. Just wanted to let you know that I visited Kerala when I was about 12 years old. We visited my Grandad (my dad's side) there. I don't remember it much but I do remember my Grandad taking me to the beach and showing me how to repair fishing nets. Hope you are having a wonderful time. Looking forward to reading more about your travels and seeing your photos. love, nonie