Anyone fancy an afternoon in Portsmouth?! - The Wedding

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I'd just like to start this post by giving a massive thank you to Anoop, Arun and their family for letting us stay and looking after us over the past few days. They provided us with some amazing food! Indian food is the best cuisine in the world and when it's home cooked, it's even better.

Secondly I want to thank Arun's (Anoop's brother) friends for keeping us occupied, there would've been a lot of boredom and confusion without them.

Anoop had loads of things to be doing before, during and after the wedding so we didn't really get the chance to see him properly, so at some point in the next few weeks we'll be heading to Chennai to stay with him again.



Anoop was staying at his family's in Kayamkulam, about two hours south of Kochi if you travel on the train. We arrived around midday, and was met at the station by Anoop, Arun and their brother in law. They greeted us the best way possible, by taking us to a bar for a beer. Which when you're travelling on a small budget is few and far between. The beer in India isn't really that much cheaper than it is at home if you're drinking in bar, however you can buy it from shops in Goa for around 30-50p a bottle.



After a quick beer we went to the house, really nice little village. All the houses are surrounded by palm trees and coconut trees, it's kind of like the village is built in the middle of the jungle. There's some MASSIVE houses there too! Much bigger than the average house in the UK. There's a lot of money in Kerela, it's got a 100%!l(MISSING)iteracy rate, and everyone generally seems better off than the rest of India.

A lot of people from Kerela also go working abroad and send the money home, for example Anoop's brother in law was working over in Saudi as a truck driver. Although he decided to come home when he was driving along one morning close to the border with Yemen and saw some missiles flying overhead, I don't blame him.



That night there was a bit of a party going on, with some traditional Indian drums and songs being performed by some members of the family.

Not unlike our own culture, that night there was drinking! All hidden away from the woman of course. All the blokes at the wedding were up on the roof terrace drinking brandy, which me and Dave mixed with Pepsi. Preferring this to mixing with water like our Indian counterparts. It tastes horrible when alcohol is mixed with water, as I’m sure you can imagine, it does prevent a hangover though apparently. So maybe I'll try it if I go on a night out before work again, or maybe not.

Eventually the drums go downstairs because the woman wanted to see the signing etc, so everyone moves downstairs. We're sat having fun, clapping along with the drums. Next up, ME AND DAVE. Yes, we had to sing. Under normal circumstances singing in front of a crowd isn't something I would get myself involved with, neither would Dave. However when the whole family is insisting you've got to step up to the plate, and the brandy did help.

So in come me and Dave with our rendition of Wonderwall! (what else could we choose?!) the drums were going along quite well too, considering the guy hadn't heard the song before! And only had our singing to go by for a melody. I'm sure there's videos, somewhere. Hopefully they're going to remain unseen back home, we were terrible. We got about three verses in and they sort of cut us off, thankfully, by coming back in with the traditional music. Everyone seemed to enjoy it though!.



On the second day Anoop had to go round to all the elders of his family and get their blessing for the wedding. So we headed to Alleppey with Arun's friends (I can't remember everyone's name, there was so many names to take in!), to see the backwaters. We were heading here at some point anyway and this fitted in nicely. We got a three hour tour on the boat for 250rs each! The perks of being with Indians is not having to pay white man prices (everything here, and I mean everything, is more expensive for foreigners. The tuk-tuk drivers don't put the meters on etc so you always pay over the odds, even when you haggle the price down).

It was a blessing in disguise really because we were planning to do a seven hour tour, and no matter how beautiful the back waters are, I definitely couldn't have sat on that boat for seven hours. The whole backwaters basically looks the same.

We stopped of at a “Toddy” shop on the way. Toddy is an alcoholic drink that's made from coconut milk, smells like petrol and tastes....OK at best. I'd wanted to try this since I read about it in “the beach” a few years ago. It's made by making a hole in the bottom of the coconut and leaving the milk to collect into a container, then left to ferment for a few days (I think). Unfortunately it didn't get me smashed, which is what I was hoping for.



We returned back to Anoop's later that evening for some food, and to find out that we'd be getting a bus at 3.30AM to drive five hours to Guruvayor, where the wedding was being held. We also found out that no meat is to be eaten the day before the wedding, this was a rule I didn't like to much considering I have meat with every mean usually.



So it gets to 3.30AM and we drive to Guruvayor. I was thinking I'd be able to get some peace and quiet on the bus then I could sleep, but I must have momentarily forgot that I was in India and silence on a bus isn't a thing here. We managed to get two hours before a film was put on, so loud that the windows on the bus were rattling. The speakers on the bus (apparently 17.1 Dolby. A clever marketing ploy I think as 5.1 is the best you can get) couldn't handle the bass!

I'm literally sat there listening to my headphones and I can hear the movie over the top. Luckily I was pretty tired and managed to sleep through it for most of the way.



I'd been really interested in coming to the wedding, beyond the obvious reason that my mate was getting married. I was looking forward to seeing how another culture did marriages. I don't know what I expected but it wasn't anything like what I was thinking it would be.

It was a very short process, some of which was performed in the actual temple where none Hindus aren't allowed to enter. There seemed to be loads of photos taken to, pretty much the whole thing was posing for photos.

We then drove back to Kayamkulam (This was literally torture for me, the music and the film were louder than the journey there. If someone gave me the choice to swap positions for 5 hours with an inmate of Guantanamo Bay, or spend another five hours on that bus, I'd choose the former). I've no idea why we went so far away for the wedding instead of going somewhere nearby. It's essentially like driving to Portsmouth for a few hours to have the wedding and then going back home for the after party...My guess is that it's something to do with the astrology, which has a lot of effect on when the marriage will be etc.



That night there was more photos, so me, Dave and Arun's friends sat on the roof terrace and drank. We got pretty steamed after half a litre of Vodka each, and the curry we ate that night was probably the best food we've had since we arrived.

In the middle of the night one of the Indian boys got up to go to the toilet or something. Bear in mind that we've been chilling on this roof for a few days, so we should know our way around by now.

Anyway, he gets up walks the wrong way trips over the wall and falls onto the roof over the front porch. A big gazebo type thing had been set up for eating in, it was made with bamboo scaffold poles and corrugated iron for the roof. This is all being watched by Dave who'd woken up with a headache. His head pops up and just disappears. Turns out he'd stood on the corrugated iron roof and fallen through it, I was crying with laughter when I found out. I've heard some stories of people when they're drunk, but that's about the best thing I’ve ever heard! He fell through a roof!. I can only imagine his face as it happened, or what it would've looked like had someone been sat in the gazebo. Like a sketch from Family Guy or something!





Having enjoyed some brilliant hospitality, and having a rave to attend in Goa on 9^th February we've decided we're going to head to south Goa to relax after all the stress we've put ourselves under. Palolem, famed for being the nicest beach in India. Hopefully there's not too many tourists there to ruin it, but we'll see. First though we're spending another night in Kochi (I can't wait to get away from this place! There's nothing here), and because I woke up still steamed I’m going to have to get the train back to Kayamkulam alone because I've left a speaker, sleeping bag, inflatable pillow and a plug! What a moron I am.

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