Hello Family and Friends,
This will make part two of the adventures of Txell and Shawn in India. We are just now halfway through our time here and have just made a big switch from the southern parts of India up to the North, but first I will fill you in a bit about what happened while we were putting about down south...
After happily recovering my lost luggage in GOA, we hung around for just one more day be taking off on a long trip south. The train was booked flat for two days out, so we got ourselves an overnight bus from Panjim to Mangalore, leaving the state of Goa and entering Karnataka. We arrived in Mangalore at 5am and caught a train just a few hours later heading south to Cochin, in the state of Kerala. That train left at 7am and we had only managed to acquire general boarding pass tickets for the estimate 9 hour ride. With a bit of luck and our new friend, Titus, who we met at the railway station, we managed to purchase an upgrade to AC class chairs, and even got to sit next to eachother!
We arrived in Cochin at 5pm or so, and, having learned our lesson about booking trains in advance, went straight to the booking office and got our next train lined up. Then we finally gave into the nice tuk tuk (autorickshaw) driver and let me agree to take us to Ft. Cochin where we wanted to stay. This 'autos' are three wheels of hell on wheels which course the streets of india like fleas on a street dog. Hence they are the fastest way to get anywhere if you can handle the stress of weaving madly through traffic with a horn blaring constantly, or at least at anything that moves, or should move - out of the way!
Unfortunately, this tuk tuk driver took us instead to his cousin's place, where he said we could rent a room for only 800 rupees, which was a much better place than the one we wanted to go to, which had become very commercial, bought out by nestle or something, and was very expensive, and besides was all booked up! i think "house full" was the key phrase. he even dialed the number, and someone said "house full" on the other line, just to prove his point. we argued, got him to get a little bit closer to our place, and then paid the fare and walked the rest of the way. he seemed deeply insulted that we didn't care for his family. the rooms in our preferred place were on a nice and quiet street, cheaper and readily available staying with a nice old indian man, Rodriguez, and his lady.
Rodriguez booked us a boat tour for the Kerala backwaters the very next morning leaving at 7am even though the office was closed. He was close friends of the driver for the company and would make sure he picked us up regardless of space available. It worked like a miracle, and on perfect Indian Standard Time (IST = half hour late) we were picked up and had a great tour! we started on a big boat and poled up and around some small chanels and some islands, stopped to see the local industries of making lye and chalk from shells and rope making from coconuts, and then had a nice lunch, with the option to pay extra for cold beer. the beer was great. We met a nice german couple over our beers that i'm sure we'll visit in Delhi as they are living there now and were only on a weekend getaway. after lunch we trucked over to a different part of the back waters and got in small canoes to tour a rural area and visit some spice plantations. i now know where black, white, green, and red pepper come from!, and i've played scratch and sniff with a cinnamon tree. txell saw her first pineapple "in the wild," too.
From Kerala we headed across to Chennai by overnight train. I had booked the Sleeper class, which isn't the best, but you do get to lay down. I got a cold while going over the mountains, but Txell did great avoiding mosquitos and cucarachas and we didn't even have anything stolen. Maybe it was the purchse of a lock and chain, or just good karma, who knows. We immediately took a pricey tourist train to Mammalapurum (or Mahabalipurum) to check out some cool rock sculptures from the 7th century straight out of the surrounding bedrock. Apparently they were completely buried in the sand in some ancient tsunami or something, and discovered by the british a few hundred years ago, and were in great shape for their age. Really cool, but I don't think we'll manage to post pictures until we land back in Barna (Barcelona). M-town was touristy, but really cool, and we chilled on the beach and ate tasty french - indo food with the indian version of surf hippies for a few days and then moved on.... to Pondycherry (aka Pondy).
In Pondy we stayed at the Park Guest House Ashram of the Sri Aurobindi guru guy. I don't really know much about him, but he had a really nice guesthouse and great flowers on his grave. Apparently, he had studied abroad, and then came back to India, helped Ghandi with the revolution, and then became a renowned wiseman-swami along with his lady, reverently called "the mother." We browsed their book store - they wrote tombs and tombs of cool enlightment sorts of things, but i wasn't in the shopping mood, so we just headed back outside to put our shoes on and get some tea. I had a nice indian version of coq au vin (chicken with wine) for dinner and Txell had some nice mutton stew with tastiness and some wine.
Our next stop was the READ (Rural Education and Action Development) center in Andimadam. It is about a one hour train ride, two hour bus ride, one hour wait, two hour bus ride, and then another one hour wait and a few phone calls from the cashew cooperative authority building to get to this place. Txell has been supporting young Jakob's education for a number of years now, though this organization, and wanted to check it out. They have a nice guesthouse as well and lots of smart little rural indian kids to play soccer with and who say nice things like "hi" and "where are you from" and "please sir, this way." apparently the british taught them how to properly salute their superiors as well, so i felt a bit like an army general being followed around by my minions. We stayed for two days and got to see all sorts of cool things like book binding, typewriting classes, greeting card making training, and sari weaving on these really cool big homemade looms. that last one was really cool. txell also gave this little dog named maxi his shot (more dramatic than the sentence sounds). We also visited Jakobs adobe hut with thatched roof and met his sister and mother. poor guy was too shy to do much but feed the baby lambs his sister had handed us to fill the akward silence. he had changed from doctor to policeman as a future career just recently, but seemed to have forgotten most of his english on contact.
The day after we hoped a flight from Chennai to Ahmedabad, up in the north in the state of Gujarat. It wants to be known as the Manchester of Northern India. They got the pollution and traffic part correct. It has been a wonderful break to take off my shoes and come inside this civilized cyber parlour and write y'all all this long email, belive me! So, my time is about up and soon we'll be catching our overnight train to the city of Udaipur, which was the location of the filming of the James Bond movie Ocotopussy because of its white palace on a island in a big lake surrounded by beautiful mountains. soon i'll find out if i have a bed to sleep on during the 9 hour train ride tonight, so farewell and until next time!
peace and love,
Shawn (i Txell)
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