INDIA - Kerala
December 3-8, 2000 Written by Aaron

Kerala is gorgeous. At one point, much of India looked like Kerala, green hills, thick jungly forests, with greens to make Kermit even enjoy being green, but alas, people and time have devastated much of India, but Kerala still shines like an emerald at the tip of India. We got into Kumily, outside the Periyar National Park, and Chuckles showed us a place that was way out of our budget, so we went to stay with the Catholics. The local church ran a guest house there and the proceeds went to charity. And since we couldn't give money to the beggars directly, we sought counsel in the Lord. The room was cheap, and there was a huge roach, huge, much too much, and I kept shooing him out of the room and he kept coming back in, and alas, I was forced to murder the poor creature. I hope he followed his dharma, and he might get to come back as a spider, but then again, are spiders better than roaches? Only Vishnu knows for sure. The worst thing one can be
reincarnated as in Asia as a dog. I wished the roach well, and hoped he came back as a cow. Funny, dogs are loved in American, cows are loved in India. Only fate decides where one cow gets a good dinner and another gets to be a good dinner.

Laura was dying, so to speak, for beef, but instead, we found in our Lonely Planet a place that served Italian food. We chanced it. But that was dinner, before dinner we went to the Periyar National Reserve where there are tigers left, like 30 or so, but seeing one is like being given an audience with the Blessed Virgin, so the boat ride, which was noisy and full of Indian tourists, was fun and relaxing (I took a nap), but no tigers. We did see elephants, which is actually rare, to see elephants in the wild. I wish them well. After seeing all of the elephants in various stages of servitude, it was nice to see some of these wonderful animals in the wild. And if the price of admission allows some of India's nature to be saved, it was well worth it. I was horrified to see one Indian woman causally throw a scrap of paper into the lake. Oh, heaven help us.

But back to Italian food. In our guidebook, there was a spice plantation turned resort outside of Kumily, and that's where the Italian food was. I wanted to see what a spice plantation looked like, so we forced Chuckles to drive us there. In the end, he was glad he did because we found a jewel, and I think he'll take other tourists there. The drive was gorgeous, up and down steep hills, surrounded by tea plantations and spice plantations, and it reminded me of California, but Laura thought I was crazy. She maintained it was far greener but just as lovely. We were going through really small towns, but the Keralans, who still speak their native tongue Malalaya, seem to be a lot richer than their Tamil neighbors. We saw real houses, like houses one would see off Highway 9 in California. And we were not besieged by beggars. While there was some political tensions going on, the Keralans, on the whole were very nice.

Anyway, on our way to the Italian restaurant, at one small town we turned off on this little steep, dirt road, which didn't look good. Chuckles was sweating. We pulled up to a gate, and he warned us to hurry because he didn't want to drive the little dirt road at night. But once through the gate, we couldn't have hurried if we tried. The Shalimar Spice Resort was an oasis. We crossed a bridge over a lotus pond and were met by the manager, who showed us around after we gave him our, "We might be staying in Kumily one more night and wanted to see a room" just so we can check it out. The rooms, little cabanas, islands in a sea of green, were wonderful, and at $120 a night, they were worth much more than that. We were paying a little over $5 to stay at the Catholics, but, well, you get what you pay for. We were shown the plantation and all the spices, well, they come from plants. Pepper is a vine, All Spice is a tree, coffee comes from bushes, as does tea, and who knew? Safeway doesn't have pictures of the plants. There was a gorgeous swimming pool, and a center for Ayurvedic healing, a place for conferences, and a restaurant that was wonderfully decorated with a little old, a little new, and a big courtyard in center of the building. We ate at a very modern concrete table, and we risked getting pasta (western food hadn't tasted very western in India so far). The food was Italian and good! If we would have known about this place, we would have changed our budget to stay there. After a nice meal, we rejoined Chuckles, and while he was taciturn at first, we soon warmed him with our good charm. Back at our Catholic Guest House (I had asked for a discount because we were Catholic, but all for not), we played Gin Rummy and then went to bed, the roaches all taken care of. We heard, however, men chanting, and some kind of ruckus. But we thought it might be one of the many festivals that India is always having, or some political trouble we had no business wondering about, so we locked the door and hoped for the best.

The next morning, Chuckles was plainly out of sorts. We had bought him a room in Madurai, and he had promised that for the rest of our trip, he would be okay. But the men we had heard last night had come to beat the hell out of a Tamil Nadu driver who had gotten into an accident previously with some of the local Kerala boys. They had chased the hapless driver in and out and around our hotel, breaking windows, and I did see some blood on the steps of the guest house. Leave it to the Catholics to be in the center of trouble. Suffice to say, Chuckles didn't sleep well, and the drive through Kerala to Cochin was hard for him. But for us, it was one of the highlights of the trip.

We stopped at one point at a St. Francis Brother's Mission/Ashram, outside of Pambanaram, called Pattumala Matha. It was in the center of tea fields, where women in brightly colored saris were picking tea. We were mobbed by some school children, so we took their picture, apologized for not having pens for all of them, and wandered around the church. We swore that if we saw India again, we'd punctuate our stay at the Shalimar Spice Resort with a stay at the ashram. The rest of the eight hour drive to Cochin was equally as beautiful. But when we got to Ernakulam, a city outside of Cochin, and we had checked into a hotel, Chuckles called our room to tell us that he couldn't park at the hotel, and that he didn't know what to do. We had just signed in all of the paperwork (which involves filling out forms in triplicate), and we had already gotten settled in. If he would have said something before, we could have found another hotel, but it was too late. I went to talk with him without Laura (sometimes her shakti, feminine energy, overwhelms the poor Indian men we come in contact with). I told him flat out that I had been in India four weeks, I had been in Ernakulam a little over an hour, and I had no idea what to tell him. I felt awful, the guy was doing the best he could, but he had been a driver for fifteen years, he had been to Ernakulam dozens of times, he let us pick our hotel without offering up an alternative to the Taj Resort that was at least $300 a night. So I trusted that our taciturn driver could take care of himself. He did.

Later that night we went to see a Kathikala dance recital hosted by a man who had been doing the dances, every night, for thirty years. The man -- had-- a distinctly, deep voice --- punc--tuated -- with --James Kirkian pauses-- and a way of -- emphasizing -- different words. But the dance was interesting. The apprentice Kathikali dancers spend four hours each day exercising their eyes, so they can move them every which way, flutter their eyes, and go through all sorts of contortions. The Kathakali dances retell epic stories, all set to drums, and the dancers use their eyes and hand gestures to tell the story. As a foreigner, you're lost a lot of the time, but as you get into the rhythms of the dancers, you pick up the emotions of the characters, under the bizarre make-up and costumes. The theater had a dirt floor, and a tarp for a ceiling, but it was great. We went early to see the dancers put on their makeup (kind of like going early for batting practice at a baseball game). We spoke with two young Americans, and had a great time. We were even back in time to watch "Friends" on STAR WORLD. Friends was like Kathakali, except in Kathakali, we didn't have to watch Ross and Rachel fight over and over again. If only they had taken lessons from Rama and Sita, they might have had a chance at romance. I worry about Mathew Perry, though, he's the troubled friend. Change your ways, Mathew Perry, for I see in your future Robert Downy Jr. escapades! Repent, repent!

The next day, December 6, there was a massive postal strike, and then every other union went on strike in support of the postal union, and those who weren't on strike had closed their shops because eight years ago Hindus had torn apart a mosque which had been built, supposedly, where the Hindu god Rama had been born (Robert Downy Jr. was spotted among the Hindu looters). Of course, this started a wave of violence and tens of thousands of Muslims and Hindus were killed. This was also why, in Madurai, before we went into the temple, we had to pass through a metal detector. There is a fear that the Muslims will get revenge by destroying a Hindu temple. Can't we all just get along? Chuckles had negelected to tell us Cochin would be a graveyard during our one day visit due to this pre-planned strike. Oh well. The Air India office was open, and we re-confirmed our confirmed tickets to the Maldives (did I mention we were counting down the days?). Without that Indian Bureaucratic stamp, you don't get on the plane, mister.

While in the Air India office, we heard loud explosions, and we were worried for our lives. Chuckles was worried also, and at one point, he was turning around to drive us back to the hotel because people told him there was trouble near the city palace, near the
Synagogue. But we drove on, the Synagogue was closed, but we saw the city palace, which looked like a run-down Portuguese government office with murals of Rama and Sita thrown in to spice up the place. Well, it was a run-down Portuguese Government office, so, it looked the part. And with the palm trees outside, I could imagine the colonials, pushing papers, and making money off the spice trade. I once rhetorically asked our Brit friends why the Americans never had any colonies and Vince answered, "You were too busy being a colony." But now with the British joking that they would rather be the 51st state than a part of the European Union, whose laughing now? Anyway, we left the city palace for the downtown, and India turned into Portugal. Cochin is no Pondicherry, but the houses where the rich spice merchants lived were impressive. We did our routine of looking for rooms to see all the posh hotels that have been converted from the old wealthy merchant homes, and we were thunderstruck. We also browsed a book store called "Idiom Book Shop" which is probably the best used/new book store in India. We also ate lunch at a trendy little cafe, operated by ex-pats, where we got chocolate cake, an honest to goodness "Good Earth" omelet, and good food. We were missing our normal western food, even though the food in India has been the best on the trip (outside of Thailand, but I think Thai food runs a close second. Laura disagrees.).

The problem was, that the oldest Christian church in India was closed due to all the trouble. This was where Vasco de Gama lay buried for several decades before being moved back to Europe. Yeah, that's right, Vasco freakin' de Gama, the Portuguese explorer who landed in Goa in the early 1500's. We went and asked the reverend (it's no longer a Catholic church) to open up the church for a small bit of baksheesh, but he said it was out of his hands, and that the keys to the gate would come at 5:00. The Christmas choir was going to be rehearsing at that time. We found Chuckles and asked him to drive us back to our hotel, and that we would come back to the church at 5:00, this was an important sight Laura didn't want to miss. He didn't want to drive us around, I think he was on strike too, but anyway, we finally convinced our driver to drive, and so we went back to the hotel, grabbed our books to trade, went to Idioms to trade in our books. We got some more Dickens (including the Christmas Stories, bah humbug), got a book on Indian Sexuality (the final frontier), and a book written by an American who retells the Indian epic The Ramayana highlighted with experiences from his travels in India.

We then went to look at another old merchant's mansion, but this one wasn't a hotel, it was a jewelry shop, suggested by Chuckles (he would have gotten a kick-back if we would have bought anything, but that's okay, that's they way it worked -- he made out like a bandit, I'm sure, from our purchase in Madurai, but that's all in the spirit of helping local economy). Laura found a ring she liked, but the price tag, oh the price tag. We got them to a third of their asking price, but only because we were really unsure as whether we wanted it or not. A third, which means we most likely spent too much on the painting in Madurai, ke gar ne. But then, we realized we didn't want to spend all of our money in India, and we left. The jewelry guys followed us out to the car, and it was Raiders of the Lost Arc all over again. "Start the car, Deepam, Deepam! Start the car!" Cue theme music. We dove into the car just as the jewelry guys started throwing spears -- jewelry sellers and beggars have a lot in common. We went to the old church, a thirteen year old boy let us in and we walked around. We saw where Vasco de Gama was buried, but we didn't wait around to hear choir practice. Most of the songs would have been in Alayala, but they were doing "Gloria", "Jingle Bells", and "Little Drummer Boy" in English, or so the darling little girls said to us as we waited for the gatekeeper to let us in.

Back at hotel, I caught John Boorman's Excalibur on HBO. Is there a finer movie? "A dream to some, AND A NIGHTMARE TO OTHERS!". Did you know that Patrick Stewart and Liam Neeson had bit parts in that grand drama? Neither did I! Chuckles had forgotten that a hotel, just down the street from where we were, had a place for drivers to park their cars, and had restroom facilities. If only he would have told us, we could have stayed there and he would have gotten a little baksheesh, but then again, they might not have had HBO. The next day we left Ernakulam and drove down to Allepy.

One of the things one does in Kerala is take a Backwater cruise. Like the Mekong Delta, the coast of Kerala is a series of inlets, bays, rivers, deltas, and well, just a whole lot of water. Chuckles took us to a city off the coast, Allepy, or something like that, we got on a boat with an obnoxious American businessman turned traveler and a rough, but very nice Brit who had fallen down a seven-foot hole the other night and had stitches in his chin (it was pitch black and there were no barriers to warn anyone about the hole). There was also on the boat an idealistic, young Canadian whose parents had immigrated from India, and he had been blown away by how hospitable the Indians had been to him and his friends. Of course, he understand that money played a large part in the interactions, but I agreed with him, and his experiences did seem genuine. We both thought about how, in THE GRAPES OF WRATH, Steinbeck points out that the poor can be far more generous than the rich, though they have so much less to give. Why is that? I don't know. Anyway, it was an eight hour trip from Alleppey, also known as Alapuzha to Quilon, also known as Kollam. We were given a local lunch on the shore, and the boat ride was nice.

Along the way we saw Chinese fishing nets, brought in by Ghengis Kahn, and we got to see people use them. Fishing and fish were all over the place, and we saw, we think, fresh water jelly fish. Or some kind of jelly fish. I know what you're thinking, you think we saw plastic trash bags, but no, I say, no! We saw jelly fish, and Laura will even back me up on this. Everything was pretty and green, and it was just a nice, relaxing, boat ride. For our last night with Chuckles, in Kollam, we pissed him off by insisting he give a ride to the American and the Brit to their hotel, and then he dropped us off at an overpriced, very Indian hotel with the worst restaurant in Asia, at least as far as the service went. If you are ever in Kollam, also known as Quilon, don't stay at the Sea Bee Hotel if you can avoid it. The next day, it was just a short hop into Trivandrum, also known as Thiruvananthapuram, and no, I did not make that up. Sure, I was going to type up some long, long name, but then I just thought I could use the Indian name, and it would sound made up. Well, what do you think?

Of course Chuckles thought we should get up early and get there as quickly as possible since he had to drive back to Chennai, and he wouldn't want to spend the day we paid for to drive us around. But we convinced him that I needed a haircut and a shave, and so we stopped in a small town at the Excellent Saloon (for men). Chuckles had wanted to get some tea, and when I saw that the saloon, not salon, was EXCELLENT, I had to go there. Chuckles was so taken aback at the quality (look at the quality, madam), that he got a shave too. The barber gave me the best haircut I've had since Mina in Los Gatos, and he shaved off my shaggy beard with a straight razor, all for two dollars. And it didn't hurt a bit, he didn't cut me at all, and it was truly excellent, hence the name of the place.

On December 8, we hit Trivandrum, and gave Chuckles a tip, a bad tip, but a tip nonetheless, and sent him back to Chennai early. Good riddance to bad rubbish. I pray for him often. We found an awesome restaurant, Amma Vegetarian, which was next to Mamma Mia's ice cream parlor. We got a bad room, and spent the day at the Orbit Cyber Cafe, typing up notes, sending emails, and doing our banking, online. The room at the Manacuad Tourist Paradise and Guest House was 250 rupees, a little over five dollars, it was hot and wet and we went to bed damp and sweaty. But the Maldives, the Maldives were only a little more than a day away.

The stunning Shalimar Spice Resort

The beautiful views of spice plantations on route from Kerala to Cochin. So green!

Aaron at the St. Francis Brother's Mission

The little boys at St. Francis Brother's Mission who were dying to have their picture taken

Kathikali performance

The Indians are cricket crazy. Here's field in Cochin with about 50 games going on at once

Views from the backwater boat tour.

Chinese fishing nets. They are huge and take from 3-4 men to operate one

To follow along chronologically, go onto Maldives webpage. Or I can't get enough of India, onto Goa.