The very South end of India

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Heading down to the very South!

First of all I´ve to add s.th. to Cochin (my last entry). After publishing that entry I went to the seaside to have my last seafood dinner in India. So I choosed and bargained it right next to the sea and went to a restaurant with an open kitchen - that was great because when I was watching how they prepare my lobster they invited me to cook with them, teached me more and in the end a Kerala style head massage - great ending!

Kanyakumari
On the train station in Cochin I booked a train ticket to Kanyakumari - as I had to wait some hours (it was already sure in the morning that the train’s going to arrive late) I left my baggage in the train station - before even saying hello the woman put me a bindi (third Indian eye, o dot in between the eyes, Hindu religion) on my forehead. I had to wait for 6 hours for the delayed train so I had lunch near the train station, booked the tickets for my trip Delhi-Agra (I tried it several times the days before in the internet but the system never worked) and went on writing my travelblog. What can you do?

Of course I arrived very late in Trivandrum where I planned to get the bus to go to … - a young Indian guy that told me to be a pilot in the US (or did he just wanted to appear faithful?) offered me to sleep in one of his 5 apartments because it would be too dangerous to arrive in the middle of the night in the small village of …
Finally I decided to go there - unless some people said the journey would last 2 hours, other said 6… it’s a very significant difference to arrive there at 23:00 or 3 o’clock in the morning. I arrived at 23:30 so it was no problem to get a cheap hostel room. I got up for my only sunrise in whole India - in that place 3 seas meet. But there was nothing else to see or do so I went to the place where I was looking forward to go since the beginning of my journey and the reason why I finally postponed my flight 3 weeks: Kerala!



By the way… Some more impressions…

It’s a pity that in every area people speak a different language - besides the nationwide official languages Hindi and English there are 21 regional official languages - most of them very different from each other (as I was told they’re not similar as for example all the Romanic languages like French, Italian, Spanish, Catalan etc.). I would have loved to learn some Indian words - so in every area I only learned 1-2 most important words - and some cooking ingredients and meanings of dishes (lot of them are used in a lot of different areas).

Potatoes are just A vegetable, not a side dish as in Europe rice or pasta

During those 3 months I had very little alcohol - 9 times only; and mostly only 1-2 glasses of wine. It’s just too expensive in India, the cost-performance-ratio is not good (in Mumbai we shared a bottle of Italian red wine for 20 Euros and the wine was hot or freezing cold)

No baby buggies - children are carried on the arms by what person ever (sometimes I thought people know each other and maybe the child could be the nice of a grandmother; finally it was just A child of a mother next to her in the train)

It was interesting for me and my skin having been in very different climates and air conditions in a very short time period to see which one is the best: I felt best in Northern India in Manali - you can compare that climate and clean air with the European Alps; I’ve to mention that the accommodation there was also very clean - that’s also very important for feeling good. It was worst in the city centre of Delhi - in that city and all the surroundings (also in the 4 hours away Agra it was still that dirty and polluted) there doesn’t seem a way out of the air pollution.

As there are such a lot of people there’s no need for a process optimization - sometimes the goal just seems to be the job creating schemes… to find a howsoever little job for everyone.

Kids depend 100% in their parents - it’s not worth it to work because there’re just too many Indians to find a well paid job before finishing studies. So parents have to pay everything - and private universities or studying abroad is so expensive (abroad they’re not allowed to work with a studies visa).

Less than two persons is definitely a waist of capacity! 😊 Often you can see 4 persons on one motorcycle (“family car”), three persons on one motorbike. Most of the women are sitting with two legs on one side on the back of the motorcycle (I suppose because of the traditional saris that are very closed on the bottom; or has it something to do with the way women in Europe also had to ride horses? Explication please!) - a lot of the younger and modern generation are sitting in the way we’re used to it on a motorcycle behind the driver - or have their own motorcycle. It called so much my attention because in THAT way of driving I already felt unsafe sitting in the back of a motorcycle in the way I’m used to.

By-and-by I adapted myself not to speak in whole sentences with Indian people on the streets because a lot of them just don’t understand it if you’re talking in a polite way to them (with lots more words); often it makes you feeling rude but otherwise most of them wouldn’t understand you; first of all because I was told that in the Indian culture/ language polite words (thank you, you’re welcome, could you, please etc.) don’t really exist. Sometimes I thought if I answer a person that would like to offer me whatever on the street goes even more on to talk to me if I say “No” or even more if I say “No, thanks”. So in the end I decided just to ignore people that would like to sell something- Waist of time for them (they better ask others that maybe would like to buy their products/ services) and better nerves and mood for me; it’s nice to be “Mrs.-No” the whole day long.

Horns are together with the brakes the most important element of any vehicle. Often mirrors just don’t even exist or are in the hinged position because often there’s just not enough space in the street (while overtaking etc.). So you also have to blow the horn every time you overtake a vehicle - everybody is watching in front of him; the vehicle behind does so as well. I think this way of driving simply works because people cannot drive fast (because of the holes in the streets or just bad streets and because there’s SUCH a lot of traffic). This is going to change by upgrading the streets and cars. In the cinemas there’s publicity to use the seat belt, to drive con precaution etc.

As in most of the cities there’s no metro and as it’s not that easy to find out about adequate buses you would need, a lot of people use the following transport mediums: air-conditioned taxi, taxi, auto-rik/ rickshaw/ tuk-tuk (motorized, with “two” seats behind the driver - for India up to 10 seats), bicycle-rik, in some cities also running-rik (I cannot go with them - a person running in front of me to bring me somewhere … no, that’s too much!).

One more time about traffic: on the new highways (one lane in every direction, good road conditions) people drive faster, sometimes 4 lines instead of one and sometimes on-going traffic between your own lane and the houses on the left hand side - you have to drive on the left hand side so at most there should drive bicycles - but in the same direction you are going… complicated to understand? Just have a look at the attached video!

Family traditions/ structure: A lot of people that have the opportunity try to emigrate to England or the Arabian Emirates. At the same time the inter-generation contract requires that the sons stay at home with their daughters-in-law. So if they’re living abroad the parents remain alone in their houses - without a social insurance that the governments provide in Europe (meal-on-wheel etc.). For example I saw that in the houseboat in Srinagar/ Cashmere/ North India and in “my Kerala family”.

In Europe a collective meal usually means to sit on one table and to eat together - it happened often to me that we eat one after another. Not negative, just different - the act of eating together doesn’t have the main importance but rather to go on talking and laughing together (those ones that weren’t eating in that very moment on the table were sitting next to us “eating people” on the sofa or just standing or playing (children) around us.

In India almost anything is possible! As you could see I travelled with a very low budget - if you pay European prices you get mostly comparative services (or even with servants we’re not used to).

Travelling as a backpacker in India means…
To take decisions every day, chaos, you never know how and where your day is going to end, plans change continuously, almost never food you’re used to, doubt about food if it contains diseases, no kitchen available to cook what you feel like, sometimes stomach problems, no appetite to eat what is offered (sometimes you would give anything for any Italian dish!), often no hot water (or they bring early in the morning in a bucket) hygienic standard you’re not used to, changing the climate every x weeks or days and getting used to the new conditions, to pack and unpack one’s backpack every x days, get used to get informed every x day about the new place and all the time new people and to make plans for the next days or weeks (the more time you have the less stressful it is - I prefer to let happen more than to plan every day; but for example train tickets you often should reserve in advance, otherwise you pay much more; if you have enough time you just stay some days more and that’s it), getting used to that plans often get changed or you change them (but at least it’s useful to have a clue which options you have (which means getting informed via lonely planet and talking to other travellers), processing all the daily news and info (trying to analyze things and situations),

It’s all about collecting information about anything in order to have an overview about: adequate prices, where to stay, maps for example to know how much a rickshaw from the bus station to the hostel should cost, choose accommodation and to make a reservation if necessary (because rickshaw-drivers mostly kind of attack you even by arriving in a bus at 5 o’clock in the morning - then it’s helpful to know where to stay and not to have to choose one of the accommodations they offer you and bargaining about the price to reach there without knowing how far away it is - all that half sleeping still and exhausted because of not having slept that well).

I missed it so much to go by bicycle - but no worries: on some places you can rent bicycles. But it seemed just too dangerous to me to drive in the Indian traffic.

Knowing that there could easily be huge spiders and obviously lots of mosquitoes (also those ones that can transfer malaria o dengue fever) around you - made by thinking that it made my skin itchy so in Kerala my skin disease I almost didn’t realise in Northern India came back a bit (not that much than in the cities but still enough).

I loved it sometimes to live a back-to-the-roots-life! You’re doing things for a long time that you usually do while talking by phone or just before leaving home: switching-on the washing machine instead of hand washing, making fire in the kitchen in order to cook, carrying water from outside the house to your room to take a “shower” (the best method is to fill empty water bottles) etc.

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Photos

Cochin/ Kochi
Kerala traditional dance

Cochin/ Kochi
The other chef of the restaurant - also studying Ayurveda Message

Cochin/ Kochi
mmhhhhhh - yummi!

Cochin/ Kochi kk
one of the chefs in the restaurant "rendez-vous" - open Kitchen

Cochin/ Kochi
3 Euros for the seafood! WOW!

Cochin/ Kochi
It seems to be worth it to work for the government (holiday houses)

Kanyakumari
Tsunami destroyed a lot here

Kanyakumari
my only sunrise in the water in India

Kanyakumari
skirts: look of Indian men in South India

Kanyakumari
at least one person is working:(