Finally! A blog about my travels.

Hey everyone,

I want to apologize first to everyone who’s been reading my blog this whole semester for the past few weeks. I’ve seriously been lacking when it comes to updates, and if it makes you feel any better, I do have a pretty legitimate excuse for my bad blog behavior. As soon as I got back from vacation, I realized with a bang how much SCHOOLWORK I have to do now! I’ve been very seriously into school the past two weeks, and I’m realizing that I’ve got so much left to work on. I’ve been doing a lot of work on my Independent Study Project (an environmental science project) as well as two other papers I have due, plus trying to learn even more Marathi before my exam at the end of the month. I’ve never had to deal with finals before, and it’s definitely catching up to me. Thank God for the block plan—semester schedule is HARD!

Anyway. Now to talk about my travels.

I started off my travels the way I generally start off on new projects—anxious and generally over-prepared. This is a tendency that generally serves me well (and did on this trip, though we’ll get to the over-prepared part later). My anxiety led me to read my travel book like a Bible. I thought that I would be able to handle absolutely any situation we could get ourselves into. This outlook was a little naïve, and so all I am is glad that nothing went seriously wrong. Yet, despite this naiveté, I found out that I’m a pretty resourceful person who can use all the tools that I’m given. Know how I found THAT one out? I walked into the train station in Pune with my backpack on and my travel book in hand and realized that I had no idea how to find our train.

Like I said in my last blog, train stations really do make sense in India. But I think part of me will never really get over the idea that not everybody speaks English. This mindset definitely comes from living in a country where mono-lingualism isn’t just the norm, it’s almost encouraged. So there we are, standing in the train station, tickets in hand, looking at one another in total bewilderment. My first instinct was to find someone wearing a uniform and ask them for help—but of course, no one who worked at the station was around. We ended up piecing the whole process together, using a variety of numbers listed anonymously on our ticket and by asking people who looked like they spoke English if this was the train going to Kochi.

Obviously, we figured it out. It wasn’t, in the scheme of things, difficult at all really to find our train. Of course, it was sitting right there on the first platform, waiting for us. But that small little step was definitely a reality check. It gave me confidence that we would definitely be able to find our way around India, but it made me more aware that everything would not be as easy as it would be where every sign is in English and everybody around speaks English like a native (ha ha).

The train to Kochi was a long one. We were delayed more than twelve hours overnight because of intense flooding happening in Karnataka. It rained much harder than I’ve ever witnessed that night and I froze sleeping on the bottom bunk next to the window. It ended up taking us a glorious 41 hours to reach Kochi, which ended up being fortuitous because we got into Kerala around noon instead of around 1 AM. We shared our compartment that day with a family from Kerala that could point out the exact point between Tamil Nadu and Kerala—it was actually shocking how it transformed from sparse trees and mountains into a serious tropical forest.

Kochi is a beautiful port town, right on the Arabian Ocean. It’s famous because of it’s islands and waterways that separate different parts of Kochi. These waterways eventually lead into the tiny canals and rivers that make up the backwaters of Kerala, some of the most lush forests in India. When we got off the train it smelled like salt water and cooking fish, so we immediately fell in love with the place. We found a decent hotel pretty quickly and established early our penchant for cheap hotels. The place in Kochi was fairly average—the four of us paid 600 rs. a night to share a room (that’s about $12 a night, split 4 ways. Awesome, right?). We spent our time in Kochi getting accustomed to what it was like to travel on our own. I suggested that we check out the tourism office, and they pointed us in the right direction for classic Keralan dance (Kathakali – look it up! Absolutely amazing stuff) as well as a day-long backwaters tour.

The tour of the backwaters we did was fantastic, mostly because we were by ourselves for the majority of the day. In the morning we shared our motor boat with an Indian couple that seemed seriously uninterested in the natural beauty of the backwaters—the husband talked on his cell phone all morning and his wife proceeded to simply look bored. The afternoon was much better; we started off with one of the most delicious lunches I’ve ever had and a quiet tour given by a man who pushed the four of us in a canoe down narrow waterways into the forest. I think the most surreal part of this experience was seeing all the HOUSES there were in the backwaters. We saw schoolkids walking along a path next to the canals, and I realized—this is so normal for them. What is the most beautiful place I’ve ever been is absolutely typical for them. How strange.

Our original plan was for us to go to Periyar after Kochi, which is a wildlife sanctuary in Kerala. We found out, however, that it was closed. It turns out that a few weeks ago, 40 people drowned in the Periyar Lake—the guide on a tourist boat warned the people not to run too quickly to one side of the boat if they should spy some wildlife, but of course, they didn’t listen as soon as they saw some wild elephants. It is tragic but utterly stupid. So we were confronted pretty quickly with the need to change our plans quickly. We decided to move on to Trivendrum in southern Kerala. We only stayed their for a single night though, on the way to Kanyakomari.

Kanyakomari is a beach town situated at the very southern tip of the Subcontinent. It’s considered a holy place for Hindus and just a pretty cool tourist town in general. Three oceans meet at Kanyakomari: the Indian Ocean to the South, the Bay of Bengal to the East, and the Arabian Sea to the West. Since it’s touristy, it’s filled with guys selling the most hilarious trinkets. Kanyakomari frustrated me at first because it was so full of tourists, but it ended up being great—we enjoyed our hotel and had some funny encounters on the beach. Most importantly, I put my feet in three oceans in one day!

From Kanyakomari, we headed to Madurai. This city in Tamil Nadu is incredibly famous for it’s Meenakshi Temple, which rises up in the middle of the city in all its ornate and complexly colored glory. It was built when Madurai was at the center of a teeming trading empire in the 15^th century. We stayed at perhaps the sketchiest hotel ever, but only had to pay 450 rs. a night for it, and nothing bad came of the experience. After the sea breezes of Kanyakomari, Madurai was oppressively hot. It was around 95 degrees when we checked into our hotel—at 9 pm. It was also strange to be back in a big city after a few days of relative peace in Kochi, the backwaters, and Kanyakomari. There were simply so many PEOPLE.

After checking into our hotel, we found a restaurant and ate delicious dosas. Dosas are a specialty of South India: a superthin rice pancake that’s crispy on one side folded over a little pocket of masala, which is usually a mix of spicy tomatoes and potatoes. They’re absolutely delicious and we ate them almost every day in the South, but the one in Madurai was especially delicious. I never thought I would say anything like this, but veg balls are amazing! I have no idea how they make them, but every time I’ve eaten veg balls they’ve been awesome. Anyway, moving on….

This is the part where overprepared certainly came in. We were approached by a guy on the street who was incredibly excited that we were Americans. His enthusiasm was infectious so we decided to follow him. He promised to show us the Meenakshi temple from the top of a shop close to the temple. I had read in my travel book that hawkers do this often in Madurai to obvious tourists, and though they promise it’s free, they harass you on your way out until you buy something. I was worried the entire time that that’s what would happen to us, but I was wrong! We stood on the roof of a government shop (so lots of tribal art items) for around half an hour, then left peacefully and found our way back to our hotel.

That night, the most ridiculous thing happened. We woke up in the middle of the night to hear the loudest, reverberating bangs on metal piping ever. In my somewhat unconscious mind, the sound sounded exactly like the sound the heaters make in my house when it’s cold outside and they’re warming up. But as I woke up more, I realized they were not only completely unnecessary (I would put the heat at still around 85 degrees), but much, much louder. We realized that there was a plumber, somewhere in the building, working on the piping. We’re still confounded as to why he was banging away at one AM, but I guess there are a lot of things about India I’ll never understand!

The next day, we visited the temple in earnest. It costs more for foreigners to go inside temples and monuments, and you always have to pay for cameras, so we only took one camera inside and wandered around for a while. There were a lot of different parts of the temple that only Hindus could go into, so it wasn’t as exciting as I’d hoped. BUT, on our way out, we noticed a small crowd, and wandered over. It was the temple elephant—all decorated and chained to a pillar. For 10 rs, he would bless you by putting his trunk on your head and take a photo with you. Seeing him chained and inside in the dark room depressed us, but Logan, Sydney and I decided to go for it. I handed the elephant 10 rs and his soft, strange trunk grabbed it from me, and the next thing I knew—his trunk was on my head. That was definitely a strange experience.

We were excited to get out of Madurai, so we left that day for Kodaikanal. But for now, I’ve got to go! I’m getting ready to leave this weekend for Malabeshwar, a hill station close to Pune. We’re going this weekend for a retreat to discuss our big Independent Study Projects that are due at the end of the month. I’ll be sure to write another blog this weekend sometime about the second half of my trip and post it early next week…. I PROMISE!

Have a good weekend everyone!