India Part 2 - Backwaters and Hill Stations

Leaving the coastal backwaters of Kerala with a car and driver, Kelly, Lex, Colin and I traveled the three hours by road up into the Western Ghats – a ridge of mountains paralleling the southern Indian coast.
We arrived at the gates of the Thattakad Bird Sanctuary and were met by Sudha, our hostess, who led us – to our surprise – through the gates and into the sanctuary itself to her home – a beautifully painted two story house with four guest rooms. We were served “tea” - a spread of heaping dishes served with chapati and fruit – by the four generations of women who made up the family, and had about an hour to collect ourselves before heading off on a bird walk with Sudha. Despite already being in the sanctuary, we had to walk the opposite direction – back out of the gate – for our walk because elephants were a short distance up the road and walking in that direction would not be safe (this is the first time we heard the phrase “big problem” to refer to elephants ahead – we would hear it again and again over the coming days – Indians take the threat of marauding elephants very seriously).
The walk circled a lovely lake with a temple on one side - the evening's temple events were beginning as we finished our walk, sending the sound of bells and drums over the water and surrounding forest.
In the morning, we rejoined our car and driver for the road trip back to the coast, where we would catch our train to Calicut. Mid-way, we stopped at the Malayattor Elephant Camp, where elephants are trained from a young age for work in the temples and fields.
The elephants are walked to the neighboring river each morning, where for a tip/bribe (“baksheesh”) you can wade in and help bathe them alongside their mahout (handler). The kids had a blast helping to scrub the babies (still large enough to crush a couple of 11 year-olds in a single squat) and the image of elephants bathing and dancing (really!) in the river will be one of my lasting impressions of our entire trip – magnificent.
After a traditional breakfast at a local B&B, we continued to the coast our driver dropped us at the train station for our connection to Calicut, where we settled into a cheap (read: slightly dodgey) hotel and sought out information on transportation to our next destination – a homestay near the Mananthavady Hill Station back up in the mountains. The following morning, we headed up with another car and driver, arriving at Varnum Homestay – my favorite of all our lodgings in India - in the early afternoon.

The Varnum family – mom, dad, daughter, grandmother, and one college-age son who arrived home for a visit on our last day – lived in a traditional Keralan-style house, served meals on the outdoor terrace, and seemed completely unperturbed by all manner of foreign eccentricities (including the hard-drinking, bald Mongolian woman who wore colorful bustiers and sheer fabrics and arrived with an Italian boyfriend she had met just days earlier – we loved her!). They were warm and welcoming, easily voiced their opinions on social and political matters, and had an extensive network of relatives that were able to provide us with just about any service we required. Their home neighbored a rice-paddy frequented by elephants (“big problem”) and was in close proximity to wildlife sanctuaries and scenic mountains and waterfalls. We spent the next four days taking in some of each, and getting so relaxed it was hard to leave both the place and the Varnum family.

Day one nearly trapped us in the pleasant lull of hanging around the courtyard nibbling on the kitchen's ever-emerging snacks and watching the kids play badmitton, but we finally pulled ourselves away to walk to the nearby road and take the bus to the local town to shop for food (the kitchen was open to guests to use as they please, and Colin was determined to make use of it). After some browsing, we found something reasonably similar to pasta, plus butter, garlic and tomatoes, then headed back to the Varnum's to wait for our afternoon game drive to nearby Tholpetty Wildlife Sanctuary.

The two-hour game drive turned up dozens of sambar (a large Indian antelope), deer, wild boar, an abudance of birds, and a lot of enthusiastic school children, but the “big problems” managed to elude us – until after we left. Our driver, not wanting us to be disappointed, drove us to an area just outside of the local town, where he knew elephants often foraged in the early evening. Sure enough, as we rounded a bend in the road he slammed on the brakes and pointed into the foliage at the edge of the forest. After a moment of peering into the brush, we saw a movement of white tusks, and then the rest of the outline of the elephant emerged. It was our first sighting of elephants in the wild. We saw four more elephants, also foraging within sight of the road, before finally heading back. We ate the Varnum's amazing dinner, and slept incredibly well that night.
On day two we rose early and headed to a nearby trailhead for a 14 km roundtrip trek to the bat caves at the top of a mountain. Early into the hike, Colin complained of heat and became so uncomfortable, I didn't think he was going to make it. At about 3 km, our guide convinced him to go just a bit further to a fire lookout tower at the midway point of the ascent where he could rest in the shade.
The view was incredible! We watched birds swooping from our vantage point at the top, and were able to see a herd of buffalo cresting a ridge in the distance. After a bit of a rest, Colin decided that he was up for the rest of the trek, and we headed off again. At the top, we scrambled into a cluster of boulders and stepped over a couple of deep crevices to find a spot to cool off and have lunch – some bananas and a thick rice-flour based porridge that you broke off pieces of and rolled up in your hand to eat.
As we headed through the rest of the rocks to get to the bat caves we came to one wide crevice that brought on a bout of vertigo for me, and I couldn't cross it. The rest of the group went ahead and I turned around and waited on the trail just beyond the rocks.
It was a beautiful solo, quiet half hour of looking over the high ridges, watching birds and butterflies, and listening very, very carefully for anything rustling in the brush – we had passed tiger scat on the trail on the way up, and that was the closest I wanted to get to any big cats while sitting up there alone. When Kelly and the boys returned, they too had headed back after the boys decided the final rock climbing ascent to the cave entrance was too much, and Lex had nearly fallen into the crevice that defeated me (its apparently not supposed to be crossed from the opposite direction – the guide had planned on a different return route after visiting the caves). Despite none of us seeing the bats that had been our destination, it was a wonderful hike, and we all descended happy and satisfied – except for a pesky blister that Lex had developed on the way up – ouch! Each and every stream crossing going down was an excuse for the boys to dunk their heads in the frigid water, fill their hats, and walk on in the heat of the day with alpine water streaming down their faces. Nice.
When we returned to the Varnum house that afternoon, the Mongolian and her Italian consort had arrived.

They joined us the next day for our last field trip – a beautiful waterfall a short 15 minute walk through the forest. Kelly and I lolled on the rocks by the water, the boys braved the frigid temperatures and climbed the rocks at the base of the waterfall, and the Mongolian and Italian did it all – climbed to the top of the falls with our guide, splashed in the pools with the boys, and posed for photos along the base of the falls. Heading back to the Varnum's, we stopped in Mananthavady in search of ingredients for cooking again (unsuccessfully) and booze – our driver sent Kelly and I into a hotel in search of a bottle of wine, where we were bounced from bar to restaurant to dark, dingy hovel, only to come up empty handed. The Mongolian and Italian were looking for something stronger, so we finally convinced the driver to take us to the local “government shop” - half an hour and a lot of haggling later, everyone returned to the jeep satisfied with their acquisitions. I believe that half of Mananthavady talked about the strange group of westerners at the booze shop for weeks afterwards – Kelly was a woman alone with two children (I had stayed with the bags in the jeep); the Mongolian was a bald woman dressed in a short, sheer dress over a very visible bikini; and the Italian was a tall, gangly guy who talked loudly and smiled at everything and must have been variably interpreted as their mutual consort or pimp.
That last night, the Varnums all joined us for dinner, talking about local norms and the plans they would eventually make for their son's and daughter's arranged marriages. While strange from our perspective, it was wonderful to have a conversation about the local traditions so openly and easily with someone who was comfortable with foreigners but could also explain and defend the local traditions with ease and confidence.
Their son would be coming home from college for a visit the next morning, giving us a chance to meet him before we left – he was extremely charming and fantastic with the boys. We were so sad to leave the Varnums, and the mountains, but had a date with the beaches of Goa starting the next day, and a long way to go to get there.....
In the early afternoon, we climbed into a Varnum cousin's car and headed down, down, down to the coast. Arriving in Kannur, we had a few of hours to kill before catching our train, so we checked our luggage into the bag room at the station and asked our driver to drop off at the beach, just in time for sunset.
The rest of Kannur seemed to have the same idea, and the beach was a festive gathering of families enjoying the cooling air that came with the end of the day. They also enjoyed us – we were swarmed first by children and then by whole families interested in where we were from and why we were there. We even received an invitation to stay with one of the families at their home that evening! If we hadn't already bought our train tickets, I think we would have happily taken them up on it.
After sunset, we had a long hike out of the beach area, crossed a very busy street (dodging rickshaws in the effort) and ate dinner at a hotel restaurant before returning to the train station. We boarded our 3AC (triple decker, air conditioned) car, had an on-again/off-again night of semi-sleep as the train chugged north up the coast, and arrived in Goa the next day.
For a few days before our arrival, Colin had been having some listening problems, so we needed a day on our own to stabilize and talk things through. Kelly and Lex headed straight to the guest house she had booked for us on Agonda Beach, while Colin and I went to Palolem Beach for the day to spend some mom-and-son time.
To make a long story short, Palolem Beach was beautiful and we began to think maybe we should spend a night, while Kelly discovered that our booked guest house had given away our rooms and went looking for something new. We wound up spending the next three days each at our beach of arrival, and reunited on the last day for the continued journey to Mumbai. Once again, I think the break did the kids some good – they had been on-again/off-again bickering in the mountains, and we all had three calm days to relax and recoup before taking on the big city.


Palolem Beach was a gorgeous talcum-sandy beach, with clusters of rocks at one end and Palolem Island at the other, forming a calm crescent cove. The water was shallow and bathtub warm, and the beach was lined with thatched-roof “bandas” for rent and open air restaurants with hammocks and beach chairs for lounging over a drink or snack.
We did absolutely nothing other than to lounge and swim on our first day, taking in a nice dinner on the beach, where Colin fell asleep in the hammock while waiting for the food to arrive!


The second day we explored the beach and small town a little more, browsing in the stone and gem shops (Colin's favorite), and enjoying the sight of fully dressed women playing in the surf and cows lounging on the beach - sacred cows can go anywhere they want, and why wouldn't they want to be sunning themselves on the beach? In the evening, we found a cafe at the far south end of the beach that was showing Avatar against a broad whitewashed wall, and enjoyed local fish curry as we watched the movie. Except for an extremely hard soccer ball kicked straight into my thigh in the late afternoon, it was the perfect relaxing day. (It was also Valentine's Day, and I had managed to arrange for a bouquet of flowers to be delivered to Tom at home – an evening skype call home confirmed that they had arrived – yay!)


On our last full day at Palolem, we repeated the lulling pattern of swimming in the morning and hiding from the sun with a good book in the afternoon, then we walked to the north end of the beach at sunset and found a small boat to take us up the Palolem “River” for a bird watching trip. It turned out to be perhaps the best birdwatching hour of my life – kingfishers and brightly colored songbirds and herons, etc. Lovely! And a perfect end to our stay.
After a lazy morning the next day, we caught a rickshaw to Agonda Beach to meet Kelly and Lex, lunched at a very yummy Italian restaurant and continued on to Goa for our overnight train to Mumbai. This time we traveled in 2AC (only 2 bunks high, rather than 3) and slept for most of our journey north.

We arrived in Mumbai early the next morning, caught a taxi to the Salvation Army-run hostel we had booked in advance, and waited to check in while the staff conducted their morning prayers in the communal breakfast room. The rush on rooms at check in time (9 a.m.) was intense – we selected a four bed room with a private bath, to the ire of another prospective guest who insisted he had been in two hours earlier and had claimed that room for himself (having booked a few days in advance and by virtue of having children with us, our claim trumped his. In the end, we abandoned the room late in the evening, because while we were out sightseeing during the day, the staff sprayed the room opposite ours for bedbugs and were exceedingly overzealous with the insecticide – the entire floor reeked of pesticides late into the evening, and permeated every room on the floor. Finding it unabated after dinner, we jumped ship for a business hotel across the street at twice the price, but with the peace of mind that comes from knowing you are not being poisoned while you sleep).


Having an early start to our one full day in Mumbai, we walked around the Taj Mahal Hotel directly across the street and boarded a boat for Elephant Island at the port ferry dock. On the island, we explored the massive cave temples and enjoyed watching the island's monkeys threaten unknowing tourists who were bold or foolish enough to wander around with open bags of chips and fruit.

The temples were impressive – carved into solid stone over several generations, they included 10-meter high columns and likenesses of various Indian gods and goddesses. At one time, there had been a 30-foot tall stone elephant – the island's namesake - standing guard at the entrance, but it was damaged in a rockslide that permanently closed the temple's main entrance and was later restored and moved to the entrance of the Mumbai zoo.
We hoped to take in a Bollywood film at a local movie theater that afternoon, but none of the films showing in Mumbai had English subtitles, and we would have been completely lost seeing them in the original Hindi, so we wandered the sidestreets and stumbled onto a fantastic little pastry/coffee shop just blocks from our hostel – a fair exchange for missing the opportunity to see Bollywood in India. We finished the day with a tour through the lobby of the Taj and a nice dinner of grilled meats and veggies, before doing the hotel shuffle and drifting off to sleep.


We arranged for a car to pick us up in the morning and run us to one of the city's large indoor bazaars and the Ghandi Museum before dropping Kelly and Lex at the train station and heading for the airport ourselves to wait for our flight to Nairobi. The Ghandi Museum was a highlight of the visit to Mumbai – it was housed in the house he lived in when in the city, and gave a thorough history of his own personal history and political development, as well as the process of decolonization from England.
As for our hours-long wait at the Mumbai Airport, suffice to say that it was – hands down – the worst airport experience of our trip. If you ever must pass through there, minimize your time and maximize your patience, and make sure you've got ample rupees in your pocket to pay for the privilege....

Up Next: Kenya – Lions and Cheetahs and Leopards, Oh My!

India - Part 1: Backwaters and Hill Stations

Trivandrum
We arrived in India following a night of little sleep – an all-nighter in the Kuala Lumpur Airport (which boasts a 24-hour chocolate shop!) and an early morning flight into Trivandrum, capital of Kerala, at the southern tip of India. With the 2-1/2 hour time change (what the heck is that ½ hour about?!) we landed at around 8:00 a.m. and caught a pre-paid taxi (helps limit taxi scams) to the YMCA, where Kelly had booked rooms for us and for her and Lex. They would be arriving later in the day from northern India, where they had spent the first week of their trip from Seattle. They would be joining us for the next three weeks as we made our way up the coast, visiting the Kerala backwaters and national parks up in the hill stations, on our way north to Mumbai. This would be the first time since leaving home that Colin had a same age buddy to travel with, and we were eagerly looking forward to it.
Taking a brief walk around the “Y”'s Trivandrum neighborhood, we were searching out something for breakfast, and one of the first things I noticed was that I was the only woman out on the streets.... or in the cafes, or anywhere I could see. Huh. I hoped that this was just a case of capital cities being notoriously provincial, and that this wouldn't be a sign of things to come. I'd heard good things about Kerala – center of the Indian women's rights movement, first democratically elected communist government, etc. OK, so: where the heck were all the women?!?
We had chai and chapatis at a small hole-in-the-wall cafe in an alley off the street around the corner from the YMCA, under the stares of a half dozen men taking a mid-morning tea break, then wandered across the street, dodging rickshaws and motorcycles (but nothing compared with SE Asian cities) to the government-run handicrafts warehouse, which had tables piled high with regional and tribal crafts from all parts of southern India. We browsed the silk and pashmina scarves, the soapstone carvings, the incense burners and jewelery, the masks and oversized wood carvings in the two adjacent warehouses. As we were preparing to leave, we noticed one more small hut around the side of the buildings, with a sign identifying it as the discount clearinghouse. We poked our heads in and Colin immediately noticed the plastic jars full of beads and stones placed among strings of of the same hanging from the wall. He spent the next half hour identifying all the gemstones he could find, and settled on buying a string of lapis lazuli – about 50 small stones – for 100 rupees (about US$2.00).* (*more on the stones later).


We headed back to the “Y” and found Kelly and Lex, just arrived and ready for some buddy-time (moms and kids alike!). That afternoon and the next morning, the boys horned in on some local kids' games of badmitton and ping-pong, and crashed a music class (with the encouragement of the music teacher) – the “Y” proved the perfect place to be with a couple of over-energetic 11 year old boys. ;-)
The second thing I noticed about Trivandrum that evening, as I headed out to get Colin an ice-cream from the corner store, was that in addition to no women, there was no beer, wine or booze to be found anywhere. I was beginning to get the feeling that Id fallen into a strict male-dominated muslim society, rather than the “enlightened” tales of Kerala I'd read and heard about. Fortunately, as we moved north starting the next day, women appeared with more regularity, and although the only wine to be found in Kerala was at government stores surrounded by down-and-out looking men, it did, at least, exist. Kelly's and my quest for the occasional bottle of wine became the source of some of our most trademark tales of India.

Backwaters
Leaving Trivandrum, we caught the train north to Kollam, where Kelly had reserved a beach cottage. When we arrived in Kollam, we went for lunch in town and called the cottage owner, only to discover that he had given away our accommodations to someone else, but had another place he wanted to show us instead. He picked us up in his jeep and drove us out of the city, past a couple temples, and down a narrow road to the seaside.
The cottage he had for us had three rooms, two of which were occupied, but he said we could share the third – a small, simple room around the side of the cabin with bamboo slat walls, and an excellent sunset view location with a small sandy beach next to the breakwater where the boys could play in the water.
He owned a restaurant in town and could bring us our meals upon request, and it was cheap. We agreed, on the understanding that we'd have the two front rooms the following day, which didn't materialize, but in the end really didn't matter. Once we'd figured out how to (kind of) pronounce the name of the beach we were on (Thirumullawarum) and where the local bus stops were, we were good to go.

That night, we walked to a nearby temple where an elephant Festival was taking place, arriving just in time for the grand finale of elephant processions, temple floats, drumming and highly stylized theater/dance on the main stage, where all the players were men, half of whom were dressed up in exaggerated drag.
It was a spectacle, fascinating, LOUD, and I can't imaging seeing anything like it anywhere else in the world. We caught a bus for our return, but when we realized it wasn't going in our direction, hopped off and walked the half hour back to our cabin in the dark, ducking the occasional headlight-less rickshaw or motorcycle. That night we slept well, despite the cramped quarters and occasional buzzing mosquito looking for an opening in our gerry-rigged nets.
Day two in Kollam, we took a rickshaw into town to take a tour of the Kerala backwaters, which start here and extend north.

We had a wonderful day slowly drifting through narrow canals, visiting boat building, coconut rope-making, and fishing families, and climbing coconut trees (well, Colin did anway). When we returned to our cabin in the evening, we moved into one of the two front rooms in the cabin, and found that a new couple of guests had arrived – they were Isreali toy makers who lived on a kibbutz. We had lovely conversation with them over a sunset dinner, and again fell hard asleep.
When we woke in the morning, it was time to move on again. We were heading to Allepey, further north along the backwaters, and again caught the train. We rode in an unreserved sleeper car, meaning we had to scramble to snag seats together (the seats and fold-down bunks are only reserved at night), but had the benefit of cushioned benches facing each other and open windows to catch a breeze and watch the passing countryside.
There were three young (20-something) Indians (one man and two women) who talked to us along the way and insisted on taking photos of us – we were to find ourselves repeatedly a local “tourist attraction” for locals as we traveled up the coast. ;-)

In Allepey, Kelly had booked a wonderful “homestay”-style guesthouse right on the backwater canals outside of town. When we arrived, we rejected the rickshaws crowding the station entrance for a full size taxi, so we wouldn't have to pile our baggage on our laps. The car dropped us at a small bridge, where our homestay host was waiting with a bicycle to help us transport our bags along the canal-side trail - 10-minutes later, we arrived at a nice two bedroom cabin fronted by hammocks and the backwater canals.
Every few minutes, a rattan-covered former rice-barge turned floating B&B chugged by, giving us hundreds of opportunities over the next few days to take romantic photographs of these beautifully-crafted and weathered boats.
At the same time, just a few days into our trip, the boys had been bickering and arguing, and after four months of not missing this aspect of life with an adolescent boy at all, I found I had no tolerance for it. As soon as Colin said “I think we need a break,” I agreed, and we spent the next day on a mom-and-son solo tour through the backwater canals in a pole-pushed dugout canoe.
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We drifted by beautiful clusters of lilypads, numerous large-beaked kingfishers, kids playing with toy boats by the waterside, and families doing laundry and bathing in the canals. We eventually spotted a sign for ice cream along a bulkhead. We asked our boatman to pull over and scrambled out to find not just ice cream, but an elegant, mature fishing eagle sitting on a perch out in front of the shop. Colin was fascinated, and the shop owner placed the bird on her arm and brought him over to Colin. The raptor proceeded to sit on Colin's arm, shoulder, and nearly his head, before he managed to return it to the shop owner with a minimum of talon scratches all over his body! The bird was also anointed with the characteristic red dye spot on its forehead that many Indian men and women wear. It was a delightful day, and the break seemed to do the boys some good.

That evening, we had a lovely candlelight dinner sitting under thatch-covered tables next to the canal – an assortment of vegetable curries and freshly fried fish – yum!


On our final day in Allepey, we made our way to the beach, playing in the surf and basking in the sun until sunset. Keeping to a stretch of sand fronting a resort set back in the trees (in order to avoid multi-species feces that pepper many of the beaches in the area, but are regularly removed by the resorts), we had the beach nearly to ourselves, not counting the pack of wild dogs a short but comfortable enough distance away.

The next morning had us on the train once again, headed for Ernakulum and historic Fort Kochi. We had a homestay a short walk from “downtown” Kochi – a charming neighborhood of narrow streets and cafes and crafts shops. At the end of a brief walk about town to get our bearings, Lex fell into one of the ubiquitous holes in the sidewalk in the fading light as we walked back and really banged up his leg. We tried to take his mind off it and compensate by playing a group game of Caton – truly fun! (if you haven't ever played it, run out and get a board!). The fates conspired instead though to make him more miserable - he woke up in the morning sick as a dog with food poisoning and was entirely out of commission for the day.

Despite feeling awful for him, Colin and I couldn't help but enjoy the town – it was the first walking-friendly place we had visited in India and we spent the day browsing in the shops, eating at the sidewalk food stalls, and watching the operation of the Chinese fishing nets along the waterfront.
Colin found a handmade drum seller and managed to get an hour-long lesson from him in how to play the traditional drums we was selling before finally breaking down and buying one (for more than he should have probably, but he was thrilled with his purchase anyway). In the evening, Lex was feeling well enough that we all went to the town cultural center for a sitar concert – beautiful!

Then came the mandatory cooking class – in the morning, Kelly and Colin and I all arrived at Leena's cooking school, in her kitchen, across from the town park, while Lex went back to the cultural center for a sitar class (he's a classical guitar player at home). While the food was great, the class was actually the one disappointment in our cooking adventures to date – instead of hands-on as all the others had been, we were expected to sit, and watch, and take notes on what Leena was doing. Hmm.... four hours of lecturing does not make for the most memorable “cooking” experience, especially for an 11 year old. Oh well, they cant all be standouts.
The evening made up for it though – we took the local ferry into Ernakulum, Kochi's modern sister-city, to attend another Elephant Festival.

We caught this one from the beginning, watching the elephants in their slow procession through the city streets and the temple musicians in concert in the light-strewn courtyard full of children playing and old men sitting beneath the trees as the night darkened. It was very cool, and again quintessentially Indian.

With only one day left, we crammed our last full day in Kochi (and the backwaters!) full to bursting.


We woke early in the morning for a full day touring the Kerala backwaters – a van picked us up at our homestay and took us to a houseboat where we would cruise the more open backwaters, dotted with islands, and enjoy a traditional Keralan lunch.


We then boarded several small dugout canoes and entered the narrow canals, getting out here and there to visit a small village, see a sight along the shore and sample local clams, tea, and "toody" - a coconut flower beer.

In the evening, we returned to the Kochi Cultural Center for a performance of Kathakali, Kerala's traditional theater/dance, arriving early to watch the preparations of makeup and masks necessary for each performance. We ended the day with a late dinner back at Beena's Homestay – one of many delicious and beautiful meals she and her husband prepared for us. In the morning, we would leave Kochi for an overnight trip to Thattakad, a bird sanctuary in the mountains a few hours drive northeast from Kochi - but that's beyond the backwaters, so part of the next blog post.....


Up Next: India Part 2 - Backwaters and Hill Stations