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Published: October 21st 2011
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This area of India is renown for the tradition of Ayurveda, an ancient naturopathic healing technique. So today I spoke with a practitioner. I was skeptical, wondering how many of the local practitioners really have the knowledge to deliver the true evaluation that Ayurveda can offer. The guy was about 30, small, modest, serious and confident. We talked about my neck, which has been giving me problems, and he recommended acupuncture and exercise. I’m glad he didn’t try to sell me something I would find hokey. I’ll probably go for a treatment tomorrow, I think it was $20, but I’m going on the road the next day and I need more than one treatment. Luckily I have a great acupuncturist in StL.
Every other storefront is an ayurvedic massage place, an hour goes for $6, and although money seems to be flying out of my wallet in every direction, I think I should get one of those tomorrow also.
Tonight we had dinner in a Tibetan restaurant. Their food is not spicy, they primarily use garlic, onion and salt. I had a seafood noodle soup which was good and fresh, if not a little bland. I had hummus with pita and
it was divine. It was sooo garlicky, I loved it. I couldn’t eat that at home, can you imagine! How rude would that be, going to work reeking of garlic. But I digress, I also had my first Mumu, the staple of Tibetan food. They are the ubiquitous asian dumpling, stuffed with whatever. The dumpling part had a noodle texture. These were veg & cheese and they were pretty bland to me, but they were good. I’m not a big fan of soy sauce, but that’s what they use to spice things up. The food is fairly reasonably priced. Dinner for two w/o alcohol was $20, for 4 items. My breakfasts has been $3 for coffee and eggs, toast and potatoes.
Speaking of which, this morning I had bfast and ordered, eggs with plain potatoes, and toast, but they brought me the roasted potatoes with bell peppers and onions that I didn’t really want. So I reminded him that I had ordered plain potatoes, so he said: “Just eat the potatoes”. Sic. My friend ordered fruit salad with yoghurt. It came as a bowl of cut up bananas and grapes with seeds. She was a little taken aback, so he
said: “problem?”, “fruit salad usually has more than two fruits in it”, “sorry, that’s all we have”. Service is not a concept well understood here.
I brought all these nice gadgets, but I haven’t been able to make my nice camera work, because the memory chip I bought for it is defective. So I just bought another one, which means I’ll be taking more pics from here on. The camera in my ipod touch is pretty much worthless.
Yesterday I took a rickshaw into the town of Varkala, where all the stores are. The rickshaws aren’t the kind pulled by people, but rather are these little three wheeler mobiles, that sort of resemble a carnival ride. I love those things. I wish I could have one of those at home to tool around with. Anyway, the driving here is as bad as you may have heard. Everybody thinks passing is a mandatory part of the driving experience. The drive as fast as they can up to the car in front of them and then pull out to pass without a second thought. So, yes, there is a very real chance I could end up in a car wreck, but I have to confess, it’s really fun. What a daredevil I am! My loved ones would probably have me request the driver to proceed more cautiously, and in all fairness, I’ll should probably consider that.
Tomorrow morning I’m leaving for the next leg of my adventure, the backwater experience. Kerala, has a lot of canals and people get around by ferry boats. The area is also famous for its houseboats (see pic), but as I mentioned previously, they are about $150 for the night. I know it would be a cool experience, but I don’t really want to spend the money so early in my trip. So we are going to take the train to a place an hour north of here, where we can catch a ferry boat that takes us on an 8 hour ride. We may take a smaller backwater canoe trip at the other end, if we feel we need to see more. From there we are heading to Cochin, where she will catch a plane and I will take the train to Goa.
Ps.: The travelblog server is having problems, so I'm not able to upload any pics yet. Will try again later.
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