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Published: November 8th 2006
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Hello everyone,
Sorry, it looks like I'm getting a little behind with this blog. And on a completely unrelated topic, hooray for the election results in the US! Maybe I will come back after all. Depends on if the democrats take the senate too.
Back to India. After finishing up with my volunteer program at RUCHI, I took a trip to the state of Kerala in southern India, where I could finally see the ocean, and where the pace is slightly less chaotic and the men are slightly less leering. I first visited a friend for a few days in a place no one, not even the Indians, apparently, has ever heard of. I then recovered from a mysterious illness (well, maybe not so mysterious, but you don't want to hear about it). And no, it was not traveler's diarrhea (I experienced surprisingly few GI problems while in India), Dengue fever, chikungunya (check
here for a description) or malaria, all of which supposedly had big outbreaks around the places I visited in Kerala.
Anyway, after recovering, I went to the town of Alleppey. Alleppey is not a particularly pleasant town in itself, but it is the launching point
for numerous "backwater cruises." I am still not entirely sure exactly what the "backwaters" are, but they have something to do with ocean water (Kerala is on the coast of the, um, Arabian sea, I believe) getting trapped behind sand dunes or something. They are very still, calm waters. A guy rowed me around on a boat while I looked at all the villages and drank coconut milk and then ate the coconut. The guy asked for some kind of extra money starting about 20 minutes after we started and continued to ask for it intermittently for the remaining 2 hours. This is not uncommon and since he couldn't even explain what is was for, I didn't pay.
The next day I got on a slow, slow, slow boat from Alleppey to another town called Kollam. The trip was about 7 hours ( I don't think the distance was more than about 40 km), but it was very relaxing and I had some nice conversations with some other travelers. When we arrived in Kollam, all 5 of us, plus our 5 packs, piled into a cab the size of a geo metro for a 40 minute ride to the
town of Varkala.
Varkala is a picturesque kind of town with the touristy area on a high cliff overlooking the ocean. There are lots of cafes that you can sit at and look out at the waves and be very chill. After a few days in Varkala, I left with one of the couples I met on the cruise for the town of Kovallam. Kovallam is a little bit of an overpriced grimy tourist attraction, if you ask me. It is full of rich white people and their families, who don't know how to bargain, or are have too much money to be bothered with it. Therefore the prices were higher than I would have liked and the locals won't really bargain too much. Also, the beaches, while scenic from afar, were not exactly pristine. But you can't take more than 3 steps anywhere in India without stepping in a pile of crap, so I wasn't overly upset. And there were some very nice sunsets.
In Kerala, I had my first Ayurvedic massage. Actually massages, they were so cheap and nice, I had a couple. Kerala is apparently the epicenter of Ayurvedic massages, and they are also quite
cheap (less than $10 for 1.5 hours) so I decided I needed to check it out. Now I've had massages at home before, and I am accustomed to undressing while the masseuse waits patiently outside the room and then getting underneath that modesty sheet thing for my massage. They do it a little differently in Kerala. They basically stand there while you undress in front of them, and then, once you are completely naked, the make you lay down, and then drench, and I do mean drench, you with aromatic oils. Then they massage you pretty much everywhere, including places I've most certainly never paid anyone to touch me (don't worry, nothing too intimate, but I was still a little surprised at first). At one place, the lady hung onto a rope from the ceiling and walked all over me with her feet. After the massage, you most definitely need to shower a lot because the oils kind of soak into your skin and you feel extremely greasy. One place they bathed me "like a little baby," as the director put it. I'm pretty capable of washing myself, so it was a little weird to sit on a stool while
some woman poured buckets of water over me. Overall though, I would highly recommend the experience.
As to the food thing, I don't believe I have mentioned that if you don't like Indian food, you won't do well in India. The closest thing I found to American food was "pizza" which was intentionally served on a soggy (not crispy) crust with chili peppers and some spicy sauce on it. While tasty, not really like American pizza. Fortunately, I do like Indian food. Yes the delicious butter chicken abounds here, but I've decided to go back to being a vegetarian, so I usually ordered the paneer (cheese) version of the dish. Mmm cheese.
Well, that gets me a little closer to where I am now (nepal, but not for long). Hope all is well.
Love, anne
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huffstutterr@AOL.COM
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EXCELLENT PHOTO TRAVEL SITE
While searching for a photo of a turkey to place on my AOL PICTURES site, I came upon TOMMY NO PAPERS cool travel blog and then your captivating and compelling title about GETTING NAKED with STRANGERS (and eating their food) Thanks, Robert huffstutterr@aol.com