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Published: February 22nd 2010
Fort Cochin, Alleppey, Kumily.
Greetings avid readers. This should be a larger blog than normal as we’re cramming 3 places into one. Again we’re about two weeks behind. Mainly because we’re currently in Varkala and we’re having too much fun! It’s like a holiday resort with lovely beach and beer… mmmm...
Anyway, a few observations for you:
All women have long hair.
All men have a mustache.
Mullets and flares are still quite fashionable.
All buses are crammed to the roof with people.
We keep sitting in the men's sections.
We’re in Kerala at the moment. It’s the hottest place yet.
Booking train tickets were the bain of our life in Alleppey. We spent nearly 5 hours on the Internet trying to figure out the whole railway and booking system only to discover they don’t accept our cards. Even when you visit the train station to make a booking they make you fill out a form-per-train with pointless information that they already know, such as the train number. This infuriates Nikki. Anyway, we now have eight trains booked for our trips up North. This includes a 50 hour, two day train journey right across India from Trivandrum to Delhi!
Will we survive?!
So, following the train journey from Coimbatore, we arrived in Fort Cochin very sweaty. This place is in Kerala (the slither of land a bit down from Goa to the bottom on the west coast). We had our first ‘tiff’ upon arrival (not bad for 7 weeks, we think). The novelty of arriving, searching for accommodation and setting up camp is clearly over. Neither of us bothered to look properly at the map of the accommodation and after spending 15 mins trekking with our bags in the heat, we arrived in an area we realized we couldn’t afford. A rickshaw man then pulled up and contributed to the squabble by insisting on taking us somewhere. After realizing it may have turned into a full punch up, we hopped in the rickshaw. He did find us a lovely home stay where the guy running the place took a real shine to Gail… The three days we stayed he pretty much ignored Nikki and whatever she said and concentrated his FULL attention on Gail. To the point where on the final night he insisted on buying us beers at the house and sitting with us on the balcony
to drink them. We discovered he’d given Nikki the strong one purpose… when we queried this, he stated he wanted to get Nikki drunker so she would go to bed and he would have Gail to himself. Silly man clearly knows nothing about the strength of Nikki’s liver. His plan was foiled but this didn’t stop him drunkenly banging on the door for the next hour. Men.
Fort Cochin is a lovely little place with giant Chinese fishing nets along the shore, quaint old buildings and millions of restaurants. It’s one of the most touristy places we’ve been. It’s quite diverse with many different religious areas on the island. We hired bicycles for the day (in 36 degree heat!!) and headed off on an adventure. We visited the Old Dutch Palace and Jew Town amongst other things. Jew Town was such a lovely area with tiny cobbled streets and a-ma-zing antique shops. These are like treasure troves full of reclaimed furniture, statues, carvings and anything else that you can think of that is a bit old and antique-y. Had a good look around and couldn’t afford to buy anything. Surprisingly. With sore arses we returned the bikes and headed
for a fun filled evening of traditional Keralan entertainment. Kathakali is a very strange art form that comprises of dance, music, mime and drama. It takes 6 years to train for the acting roles and makeup. The whole performance is 29 hours long and is usually done over night in a temple; we only saw a one hour snippet which was a rape/assault scene (this hour was enough; the drumming was starting to get on our nerves…). It is now only being kept going buy tourists wanting to see it performed.
Despite the fact that there are loads of restaurants in Fort Cochin, we managed to pick ones full of mosquitoes where the food never arrived… Gail was allowed to unleash the complaining beast she had so bitterly hidden over the last few weeks and refused to pay which meant the next night… WE MADE OUR OWN SANDWHICHES!!!!! OMG. This was the best thing ever. Cheese spread, white bread, salad, crisps and no curry insight. It’s surprising how much we’ve missed cooking (even Nikki).
Alleppey
Alleppey was the next stop down in Kerala. It’s another little town which is the gateway to The Backwaters, which are
a network of waterways running through all the local villages and rather a pretty sight. Learning from our previous experience, we allowed ourselves to be accosted by Matthew who convinced us to try out his Home stay accommodation. It was stunning. We were so overwhelmed to discover it was below our budget and instantly accepted the triple bed room, ensuite and gigantic balcony for 300r a night (four quid!)
Our main reason for coming to Alleppey was to see what all the Backwaters fuss was about, so we spent the day with Khunjachan who is a 58yr local man. This trip was really insightful and evoked more contradicting feelings about life in India. Firstly, we caught the ferry to his house. The family live in three basic rooms which are decorated with religious artifacts on the concrete walls. His children are now grown up but it’s difficult to imagine how they would all manage to live in this confined space. His wife Rosa made us a traditional Kerelan breakfast of coconut and dry stuff resembling noodles and the best masala tea. We quickly learnt that hosting is very important and he tried to fill us to bursting point. Gail
found this difficult as the food was crying out for some saliva. Nikki saved the day and munched both our plates.
With full tummies, we scrambled into our canoe for a slightly alternative tour of the waters. Many people opt for tourist boats or expensive houseboats (4000r) but these are unable to negotiate the tiny waterways on which the local people are bathing, washing, cooking and commuting. At times, it felt like we were rowing silently down people’s streets staring at them having their daily wash. We’ve learnt that Indian people don’t have the same sense of privacy as us, due to various factors, but this didn’t stop us feeling awkward or intrusive.
We stopped off for some coconut toddy (beer) which is meant to be about 10per cent proof! Brave Nikki ordered a bottle at 100r (extortionate over-priced) and is tasted bloody disgusting. Luckily, he sent us off for a wander and as we turned around we saw him sneakily guzzling it all up. Oh well… The canoe was lots of fun yet very tiring on the arms. Two things were particularly disgusting:
1) He made the horrible spitting noise that Indian men do when they
are hacking up spit
2) we were rowing through the rather difficult terrain of compact water lilies when Kungjachan needed to make his way to the front of the canoe for extra power. During his transition, he managed to lean so far over that Gail got a face full of 58yr old testicles as he was wearing a lungi (man skirt). It was disgusting and Gail nearly vomited in the river.
We ended up spending a few days extra here as we liked our balcony so much and the train ticket saga (see above). We did try to get to a pool one day but were kindly informed that it would cost four pounds an hour each to use it. So, we walked straight out, into the queue for the wine shop - which makes buying alcohol feel a little seedy - bought a load of beer and got trollied in the sunshine. Classic British birds. Also, we visited the local Secret Beach which is still only used by fisherman. We watched one fisherman do a poo on it, wash his arse in the sea and then quickly left.
Kumily
We had to get up at
5.30am to get ANOTHER BUS to a town called Kumily. This is slightly back in land and up the mountains again, bringing a welcome relief from the constant sweating. Again we got accosted at the bus station (it saves fights) by a guy calling himself King Abass… He took us to Neema Guest House/home stay which was a bargain yet again. 4 rooms, a big balcony and really sweet men running it. Within minutes we crumbled under the King’s pressure and had signed up to different trips; a spice plantation and jungle jeep safari on which we MAY see tigers, elephants and other exotic creatures … ‘no refunds given.’
The spice plantation was informative yet strange. The lovely Indian lady showing us round spoke really good English but didn’t deviate once from her script, even when Gail cracked some of her ‘funny’ jokes. At the end of the tour she informed us that ‘tour is now over. Please go to shop’ and seemed to vanish in a poof of smoke… We’ve learnt that most spices make cough medicine and that they are dried out and ‘then go to factory for processing’. So we’re basically none the wiser.
Our
second trip was epic. Up at 4.30am (it was painful) to be picked up in an actual jeep! Vicky from Austria was sharing the jeep with us and she was most excellent in sharing our cynicism, sarcasm and piss taking throughout the day. We didn’t realize it would be so bloody cold in the back of a jeep at 5.30am. Stupidly we had shorts and t shirts on with a cardigan for warmth. It didn’t warm up until 10am and by this time Gail was shivering and slightly blue. We got into Periyar Nature Reserve and quickly realized that the well trodden tarmaced road and amazingly loud diesel engines meant that there would never be a hope in hell that we would spot any tigers or elephants… This didn’t stop the overly enthusiastic driver from making us jump out every two minutes to look at dots on a hill. We did see a Woodpecker, Giant Squirrels, Tadpoles, 1 Monkey, Deer and Bison bloody miles away and… Elephant poo. Also, we had a lovely breakfast to salvage this disappointment followed by a treck in the jungle. The first three minutes started well then a massive, vicious flying ant ate Gail’s face
who then whimpered in pain for the next half an hour. The treck was in search of the elusive elephants and led us high up into the jungle, which was loads of fun. After this, we had a safety conscious boat ride in which we were forced to sit and sweat in ill-fitting pointless comedy life jackets whilst ‘spotting’ tadpoles. We met some really lovely people on the trip and had a fun day despite the piss-taking. Luckily, India always seems to find a way to rectify itself and the next day whilst walking down Kumily high street we heard a loud band, lots of noise and turned around to spot a bloody decorated elephant trotting down the street in a parade!
That’s all for now folks, the bars and sunset are calling… x x
Keep scrolling down for extra pictures, then next page...
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bren
non-member comment
Best photo so far
My favourite pic so far. The Knitted Characters on Chaise Longue. Not only are they cool, they are not sun kissed at all unlike you two. Heee, We've had more snow here and it's feckin freezin.... We are loving this journey with you keep the info coming. Are you both ok? Nikky's legs look sore!! speak laters xxxxxxxxxxxxxx Bren & Roberto