Tiru, Part I

**pics/vids added as of 6/1; post complete**

I’m sitting on the steps in the main entry area of Sri Ramanashramam, the ashram of Sri Bhagavan Ramana Marharshi, and a guy in renunciate robes comes over.  His English is good.  He says are you staying here?  I say yes.  He says, good, good, then come with me.  I don’t know whether to follow him or not, but he seems very congenial, and as we are walking he is getting Namaste’d by several people with whom he seems pretty familiar, so my wariness decreases.

He walks me around and shows me the areas of the ashram, but there are too many places and I’m not remembering them.  Here’s the well for puja water (water for worship/offering), here’s the mahasamadhi shrine (where the person “left the body” - maha means “great” and samadhi is the deepest layer of meditation you can get to).  Here’s the mediation room, come in here and sit for a bit.  He gets me a couple of pillows and I prop my bag up near me and I meditate for a while.  I get a message, something like “this is a business, but I am still here.”  Up til this point, I’m not noticing anything strange.

A few stops later, and he shows me to this sadhu who lives on the mountain and he blesses some rock from Mt. Arunachala and gives them to me for my family.  He blesses me and puts a tikka mark on my forehead with powder.  He has me light two incense sticks.  Pretty soon, though he starts asking for money and things get uncomfortable.  He also wants a flashlight.  I’m not giving him my flashlight, but I do give him some money.

I leave, and the original renunciate is waiting there and I tell him I’d like to go to the office and get my room settled.  I’m a bit frustrated by his leading me to this guy, and it feels like just another case of take advantage of the (comparatively) rich foreigner.  I now understand the “this is a business” line from earlier.

By the time I get to the office and get my key, the man there says something to me about there will be people trying to lead you to the well and so forth, and “do not give any person money.”  I said, I just did!  He was shocked, I guess, at the speed with which they got me.

When I come out of the office, the man comes with me, and sees the renunciate and they have a terse conversation in Tamil.  The renunciate is saying something to the effect of “he didn’t give me any money” which I have to agree with, but I offer up the part about giving it to the man he led me to; they probably split the money, half for finding the mark, half for successful extortion.  A few more terse words, and I am guided by an actual employee (though unmarked) to my room, which is on the end of the row of rooms, all in a straight line, like an outside entry motel.

The accommodation is basic.  It is a simple 10x10 room (best guess) with a bathroom that has a spigot and a bucket.  There is a sink in there and a toilet which I am grateful for.  The main room has a single bed with a thick-ish mat for a mattress which lays on a piece of wood instead of springs.  There is a tiny desk in the opposite corner.  The windows and door have bars and screens to keep the monkeys out. 

There is a well-worn and simple tile floor throughout, and there is a fan in the center of the room overhead.  There is a single electrical outlet and there is a bare incandescent bulb and a bare florescent tube light, both in the room.  There are two large eye screws on either side of the room, and a heavy yellow length of polypropylene rope is fastened between the two to dry the laundry that you do.  Does it even need mentioning that there is no AC here?

I really don’t mind this type of accommodation, however, as it is an austere place for serious minded people who intend to get on with it.  I’m glad I’m not here for longer than 4 days/nights though, and as it proves out, I have very little energy to do anything at all my first day because of the Tamil Nadu heat.  I have two meals, one at 11:30a sharp, and one at 7:30p sharp.  There is a breakfast offered at 7:00a sharp also.  There is really no wiggle room here on the scheduling.  Everything is timed and you are expected to be somewhere in advance of whatever-it-is is starting.  The discipline helps set the tone for the inquiry.

Shoes are not to be worn really anywhere inside the ashram, and my normally socked-and-shoed Western feet are taking one for the team.  Most of the areas I’ve been have been more or less shaded, so the surface temps where I was walking have yet to burn my soles, but the sand is coarse with tiny jagged rocks tossed in, along with sticks and/or thorny things.  I have to dodge the bugs too, because accidentally stepping on a bug wearing shoes and accidentally stepping on a bug barefoot, are two completely different things.

The food here is fresh and nutritious and does not agree with my palate in the least.  This is the least appetizing food I have eaten anywhere in India, but I can tell it is prepared well and of good quality.  I guess I don’t like Tamil cuisine.

The dining hall has a stone floor and that is where everyone eats.  There are no tables or chairs.  When you walk in (they only open the doors at the exact time and people proceed in single file), there are banana leafs set about 3 feet apart on the floor.  There is a silver metal cup next to each leaf.  Everyone is guided to a row and a place setting like getting “directed” when you’re trying to park at the State Fair.

We sit down cross-legged, and the Indian people start washing their respective banana leaf plates with the water.  I’m not doing that though because I’m assuming it’s just local water, which while fine for many native digestive tracts, is not fine with people who grew up on clean water.

Within about a minute of people sitting down on the floor, men with large pots and buckets start coming around, each carrying a type of food.  Everybody gets the same stuff, all of it, unless you put your hand over your leaf and then they will pass you up.  They put a bunch of stuff I’m unfamiliar with on the plate each meal time, but always the rice, and always something extremely runny they put on top of the rice.

This confounds me.  I mean, we do not have any silverware.  The entire place setting is a leaf and a metal cup.  No napkin, no cutlery, no nothing.  This is a no-pretense kind of place.  How are we supposed to eat rice soup?

The Indian’s dig in with their hands (their right hands, to be precise), and unlike anywhere else I’ve seen, these people are using the entire hand as a utensil.  In other parts of India, it is customary to eat with your fingers, usually up to about the first knuckle or a little past.  As I’ve been in places where it was appropriate to eat with my fingers, I have done so.  But here, there’s no knuckle rule, it’s a flat out free for all.  Maybe if you got in past the wrist you’d be seen as sloppy or something, but they are using the entire hand.

And actually, it makes sense to do it that way, especially when it comes to something with the equivalent consistency of thick water.  They are sweeping all five fingers quickly through the liquid like a makeshift squeegee, and then at the last second giving the hand a half twist.  With the forward moving inertia that the liquid now has from the fast squeegee motion, when they flip the hand, the liquid just rolls up into the fingers which they then holding tightly together in a cupped fashion.

They bring the hand up, fingers to the mouth, and tip the hand like it were a pitcher of water and the liquid goes down the hatch.

Ingenious!  And difficult to do, especially with a non-indigenous dexterity, and an overgrown moustache.

The Indians are eating so fast and so slouched over (remember, the plate is also on the floor), that I have no idea how their bodies are actually digesting what they are inhaling.  The rice man comes around a few different times, and even 15 minutes into the meal, men are still coming around with buckets of something new.  The Indians are devouring the food.  Most of the ones I can see (we sit in rows facing each other) have virtually clean leaves.  Where they are putting it I don’t know.  I haven’t eaten half of what they put in front of me, and I’ve refused seconds every time, and firsts on some things too.

When you’re done eating, you get up and leave, usually folding your leaf in half to cover any remnants on your plate from the flies.  You exit the same door you came in and right outside on the left is a bank of tiny spigots that the Indians are using to clean their right hands. 

As I’m walking out from dinner, I see a lady getting water from some type of dispenser spigot, still inside the dining hall.  I see a couple of filters, and I realize that this is purification machine for the water.  I’m running low on water, and rather than go out to the tough world outside and find a shop selling it (which wouldn’t be that big of a deal in all reality), I’d like to fill one of my empties here.  I hustle back to my room, grab my bottle and head back.  But by this time they have already shut and locked the doors of the dining hall.  No entry.  It’ll have to wait til morning if I’m up in time, or lunch if I’m not.

The majority of today (my first day) has been spent lying on top of the bed mat with a huge headache.  I’m not sure if it’s the adjustment to the heat or what, but I don’t feel well overall and getting up just makes me queasy.  I just laid there, letting the ants crawl over me, and so long as they didn’t bite I didn’t interfere with their transit.  I watched some geckos around the room.  I listening and watched the monkeys playing on the other side of my screen door.  I heard the calls of the peacocks that roam around the ashram and the dogs barking greetings to each other from across the courtyard.  Oh, and I moved the bed a couple inches away from the wall on each side, and I think I have solved much of my ant problem.

While I’m here, I’m hoping to circumambulate the mountain and climb to the top.  I want to visit the the cave that Ramana Maharshi meditated in for 17 years and the temple that he sat in the basement of while he was still a boy, having left home at 16 or so after having a direct experience of the Self.  His story is an interesting one, with him starving and being bitten by rats, beaten and taunted by his peers, until finally someone saw what he was doing and set him up in a hut and provided him daily meals.

Soon he had devotees and in time, an ashram was built around him, even though he taught mostly through silence for most of his life, preferring that to language which was limited.  Carl Jung, the famous Swiss psychiatrist said of the Marharshi, “In India, he is the  whitest spot in a white space.”  Ramana died in 1950, and a star shown above the mountain at the moment of his passing.

Anyway, I hope to do those things I mentioned here, but at the same time I need to temper my goals with the reality of the heat and the toll it is taking.  Really Just being here is enough.  The rest would be icing.

We’ll see how tomorrow goes and the headache.  Assuming I can get the video of the monkeys uploaded in the next day or so, enjoy it until my next post.

 

To Tiruvannamalai

The train trip from Alleppey, Kerala to Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu was as interesting as every previous train ride.

I originally had a confirmed Sleeper class ticket for this leg, but early in the Journey overall I started rebooking my Sleeper class tickets with AC class tickets because of the extreme heat.  For this specific leg, my AC replacement ticket was a high Wait List and I didn’t know if it would confirm or not.  As it turns out, I ended up moving from the Wait List into the RACs, which means I could get on but I needed to sit and not lie down.  The reason being, there were going to be two people sharing the berth, which means neither of us could recline.  That was good enough for me and I cancelled the Sleeper Class ticket for a partial refund (too late to get a full refund), and went the AC route even though it was an RAC.

I got on the train about 3:30p, and the we pulled out pretty much on time which was 4p.  It took a while for the air-conditioners to cool the place down (again, to an Indian level of AC, which is far different and hotter than a Western level of AC).

Immediately there was some conversation between me and a guy from Ponducherry (near Chennai and within 100 miles of Tiru).  He works for the Australian division of Kmart in QA.  Before that he worked for Pier 1.  It’s interesting to see how all these names we know have their toes in the foreign waters.  Economically, the world is more connected than we think.

We have a good conversation, and then a protective dad and mom get on (at some subsequent stop) with their daughter who is probably around 18.  They give me and the Indian a few once-overs before leaving the train as it’s pulling out of the station.  A few stations later and a separate whole family shows up and the boyfriend of the teenage girl keeps peering in the windows from outside the train, giving the equivalent of “I Love You” signals and whatnot.

Another brief conversation, this time with the other RAC guy sharing my berth.  I ask him where he’s “getting down” which is Indian-English speak for getting off the train.  He says Chennai, which is the last stop.  Mine is about 3 hours prior.  I tell him at least he’ll be able lay down after Katpadi, where I’m due to de-board.  He says, we’ll get confirmed long before then.  I’m thinking, what??

I thought once the train was moving, you were pretty much set, but alas this is not so.  As passengers who are due to get on the train at later stations fail to board, their berths open up and any RAC’ers will move into a full-on confirmed berth.  Sweet!

Dude’s prediction comes true about 4 hours into the trip, so he goes to a different section where he has his own space.  Which means mine is now all mine.  He leaves and tells me to “stretch it” with a smile.  I think he means fold down the seats into the berth (I’m again in a side berth, this time the lower).

Befpre I can get it converted though, a guy from a nearby section plops into the seat opposite me and wants to have a conversation about spirituality and the differences between East and West.  He’s a financial advisor and is very bright with excellent English.  He says he spent 5-6 years in Ontario, but came back because he felt like the West didn’t give enough credence to something it couldn’t prove with science or math.  I have a similar sentiment and we talked for about 30 minutes until somebody came by, I think it was the dinner man (he comes by and you order, then at another station he magically re-appears with your food, you only have like 2 choices each for veg/non-veg, though). 

Anyway, the financial advisor leaves, and after a little bit of jostling around, I get situated and start listening to some tunes on my phone with my earbuds and generally winding down.  Then I feel something on my feet.  Quick and light, but kinda on the soft side.  I think it’s either a mouse or a really big roach.  Instinctively, my legs jerk in the air, and then I’m trying to look like I didn’t overreact, because whatever it is is now invisible and the other people in the section are looking at me and smiling like I’m a bit loose up top.

I pull out my little flashlight and shine it under the seat to see if I can see anything, and also in doing give a statement like I wasn’t imagining it, but I don’t see a thing under there.

I’m doing this rail leg in 3AC, and my previous leg was in 2AC.  On that coach there were huge cockroaches on the floor and coming out of the windows casings every so often.  I felt them go over my feet, but it wasn’t dark out, so I didn’t jump like I did this time around.  I was trying to determine whether or not what I felt tonight was the same.

Half hour later, we hit some loud tracks and two furballs go screaming across the aisle into the section where the skeptics were.  I started laughing and pointing.  Then they were looking under the seats and whatnot.  At least I know it wasn’t a huge roach that had laid eggs in my bag; a little present for later.  The most I figure mice will do is chew a hole in my bag or put some turds in it, both of which would not faze me at this point in the trip.

I laid down probably around 11p or so as I wasn’t really very tired before that and set my alarm for 3:20a as my stop was at 3:33a.  I go through the whole ritual when I get up.  Taking the phone out of “airplane” mode (I usually keep it there on the train to conserve battery and turning off all the wireless/bluetooth/cell connections really helps), I pull up an Evernote note that I have with all the stops and the timings on each specific train that I’ve been on.  Then I cross-reference with the actual time, and pull up Google Maps, which with the cell tower info now live, it will give me an approximate location within a half mile or so (the GPS component is really spotty at best in India).  I then get a rough idea of where we are, and how late (if any) we are running.

In this case, we were about 20 minutes late or so, and end up pulling into the Katpadi station in Vellore just before 4a.

I get off and see some older men and ask them which way to the bus stand to Tiruvannamalai.  He tells me I want to go to the New Bus Stand and when asked, he says a tuk will get me there for about 10rs (or “bucks” as the natives tend to refer to the Indian Rupee).  I try to get an auto and two drivers walk away because they won’t come off of 100rs.  Another driver, however, will get me there for 70rs and I go with him.

I get to the New Bus Stand and there are buses everywhere, none of them labeled, and people standing around most of them.  One of them is pulling out and I stand just to the side of it and give a wave.  The driver stops.  I say “Tiruvannamalai?” He points me to a man on the ground who then points me to another bus a little further down.  In America, the bus driver would have acted like he didn’t see me.

I go over to the proper bus, confirm it, and they put me in the back seat.  It’s not very full at all, which I was expecting, because at this point, it’s about 4:15 in the morning.  I mean who is going anywhere at 4:15a?

About 20 minutes later, the bus starts to pull out, and the man in the back, who is in charge of bossing people around, keeps yelling Tiruvannamalai.  Nobody is coming.  We are now moving very slowly.  Some people start to get on.  The bus stops.  We start creeping a little further, more people are getting on.  What the hell, people.  Didn’t you hear the man yelling Tiru for the last 5 minutes?  Why after the bus is already moving do you now want to get on?  Give me a break.

This bus ends up more packed than the one from Khuri to Jaisalmer where my knees buckled twice.  On this one, people are actually hanging out of the doorways into the road.  At least I am not standing.  There are women getting on right and left and I am starting to resent them, because this is a two hour bus ride, and I figure I’m going to be displaced because they decided to stop the bus to get on.  However, the same rules don’t apply here as they did in Rajasthan, and it is egalitarian.  Whoever is sitting can sit, and the slackers who jump on after we’re trying to get underway, get to stand.  At least there was a bit of justice.

The bus ride was miserable.  I don’t ever want to travel on a bus in India again.  It sucks.  I’ve been on rickshaws, in Vikrams, in cars, in cabs and on the metro.  I’ve travelled in 1AC, 2AC, 3AC, and Sleeper class on the trains, and I’ve travelled by “Deluxe AC” overnight buses as well as State and local buses.  The buses have sucked the hardest.  It is really without comparison.  I mean Sleeper class gets crowded, and it’s dirty and loud and oh-so-hot in the summertime.  But at least you can recline and you don’t have people pushed up on top of you.

A man had his arm holding on to the side of the bus not 3 inches in front of my face.  It was so close, I could feel my own breath hitting his arm and returning.  The guy next to me is leaning into me and fell asleep at one point with his head on my shoulder.  I had a lady’s bag between my legs, and I’m smashed into the side window.  This time it wasn’t the window casing that was jamming my shoulder with every bump, it was the windows’ slide handle.

The guy who is snuggling me speaks some English, but so quietly, I’m not even sure he knows he’s speaking aloud.  We’re in a crowded bus with the horn and all that, and add in the road noise and the open windows and I can’t hear anything this guy is saying.  Every single time this guy talks I have to ask him to repeat it like three times before I can hear him.  Most of the time, I get part of what he’s saying, and just nod and say “ohhh” or “yeah” or “ok”…  Please God, get me off this bus.

The Snuggler says its especially crowded today, because it is an auspicious day to get married.  That’s what all the women are doing on here.  After he says that, I see that many of them have flowers adorning them, and their hair is kind of slicked back a bit probably with some kind of scented oil.  I feel a little selfish about what I was thinking before when they were all loading up.  I hope they have happy marriages.

After about 20 stops (no kidding), the “direct” “express” bus (also not kidding) finally reached Tiru.  I get raped on the ride to the Ashram and I go to check in.  Not open yet for another 45 minutes.  I can’t fault them, I’m here quite early.  They open at 7:30a which is fantastically early for any Indian administrative work, so I have a seat on the steps and wait for the office to open up, hoping things are about to get a bit easier.

Kerala, Part III

**post complete, thankfully no video**

The massage was an interesting experience.

Jimmy guided me back to a small hut-like building on the back of the property where there was a small (maybe 5 feet tall if he had shoes on) but muscular looking man with a smile a mile wide.  He was darkly complected and his teeth were the most amazing white.  Like he used 14 packs of the Crest White Strips or something.  Huge, sincere smile.  And spoke very little English.

He motions me into the room and shuts the door most of the way and stops it with a part of a brick.  He points to my shirt and I say, take it off, and he smiles his big smile and nods his head.  Next comes a point at my shorts, no problem.  Then comes the point the my underwear.  Ummm…  ok???

A few seconds of hesitation, but a few more later and I’m standing buck naked in front of Little Man and he reaches around my middle with his small arms and ties this piece of fabric around my waist.  It’s basically a 3 inch wide piece of lightweight white cotton cloth, and it’s about 18 inches long. 

There are fabric ties around the top of it, which is how he’s fastened it around my waist.  He moves around back of me, and reached through my legs to grab the dangling cotton and then pulls it up in the back, and tucks it under the ties.  It looks like the most rudimentary diaper you have ever seen, but it gives me a bit of my modesty back, for now at least.

He has me sit on a stool and he opens a dark bottle of something and he pours about a quarter cup of whatever it is, in to my hair on the top of my head.  And he starts massaging my head.  Pretty soon, he is working the oil (I think it was coconut oil infused with Ayurvedic herbs) into my face, around my eyes, into my moustache.  Everywhere.  I’m not even worried about it.

At some point he indicates that I should get on the table.  The table is hard.  It has no cushion whatsoever, like a piece of three quarter inch plywood with a waterproof tablecloth on top.  Like you’d see on a picnic table somewhere, but it wasn’t red and white plaid.

I get on the table and Little Man starts massaging my legs, and there’s no safe boundary area between where my leg stops and my other parts begin, if you know what I mean.  This is pretty much a no-fly zone in a normal American massage, but that’s not the way it works here, apparently.  There are muscles there, and they need to get their kinks worked out, you see.

The little diaper is doing precious little to keep my bits in check, so with every lunging movement (Little Man is going up and down the length of my leg, which is a stretch for him, he kind of looks like he is rowing a boat) I’m falling out of my cotton restraint.

This does not bother Little Man in the least.  He acts like he doesn’t notice, and maybe he doesn’t for all I know.  But I am noticing as it is quite a peculiar and strange feeling, and even more peculiar and strange for it to be happening in front of another man.

He gets up to my chest and belly and arms, and does the whole thing.  Sometimes knocking or hitting me in a synchronized fashion, other times working long, long strides down the length of whatever part he’s working on.

Pretty soon its time for me to flip, and at this point, the diaper is in his way, so he just undoes it.  A full-moon has risen in the middle of the day, in Alleppey, Kerala.  The whole process is repeated, just as it was on my front side.  Utter disregard for the more private of parts or the proximity to them.
This went on for apparently an hour, because that’s what I paid for, though I wasn’t watching a clock, because there was no clock for one thing, and I was just trying to not start laughing like a school girl for another.  When Little Man was done, I was pointed into the shower room, and he gave me a trial bar of soap and a trial sized shampoo which he cut the top off of for me with some tiny scissors he produced.  I asked him for a towel as there was none around, and he must of known that word, because he brought one over.  It looked like a big version of the diaper, nearly gossamer thin cotton, but without the straps.

I get into the shower room, but there is no shower head.  There is a bucket and a scoop (more like an open spouted cup).  I picked up the scoop and poured one over my head to get wet.  At this point I realized how viscous the oil was.  I felt like I was covered in motor oil.

I take another scoop of the water (Little Man is watching all this, by the way), and start shampooing my hair.  Little Man, at this point, comes into the shower-less shower room and takes a scoop of the water and puts it over my head, so I can rinse it better.  He says something about soap in a questioning kind of way, and I hand him the package and he opens the soap.

He then proceeds to wash me.

My modesty had left some time ago, and my pride was MIA as well at this point.  It’s helpful anyway, to have someone bathe you in this situation, because my arms can’t reach to the Crisco on my back anyway.  Little Man does my arms, legs, back, chest, and every other place as well, except for my face.  Apparently my face is off-limits.  There was no other place that was true.

He rinses me a half dozen cups worth, and then hands me the cup to finish up.  A few more dousings and I grab the threadbare towel and soak it nearly immediately.  I wonder if I should pull my clothes into the shower room, but decide to present my naked self into the room, as there was nothing that needed hiding anymore between us.  I get my underwear and shorts and finally my shirt back on, and I thank him (I actually am really relaxed from the massage), and we smile broadly at one another for a half a second.

That was interesting was all I could think at the time.

In retrospect, I think I prefer my massages to still have the no-fly zone.  I’m also pretty sure I still prefer to be washed by my own two hands and to be the only one in the shower for that matter.  But he never did anything untoward or inappropriate, it was just a total disregard for private space (literally) and a completely different worldview on modesty.

What can you expect from a country whose “strangers” are so intimate with one another.
The rest of my day paled in comparison to the massage.  I went for a walk along both sides of the river, I bought a package of pineapple cream cookies for $.20 (think vanilla/pineapple Oreos), and I hopped a ride back on the ferry which was free.  I found an ATM which didn’t like my card, but I had another debit card it did like, so I got some money out to pay the piper in the morning when I check out.  I took my camera out and got some good pictures of the many species of flowers in the garden (again, and better), and then I ate.

Dadu, the cook here, made me some chicken curry which was excellent, along with dal fry, chapattis, some vegetable dish which had a mostly dry mixture of tomatoes, green peas, onions, and fried paneer cheese cubes in it, and some fresh papaya from the tree outside.  I’m not sure why every Indian dish gets translated into English as some kind of curry.  You would think from the name that I have been eating the same thing over and over again, just with a different main ingredient.  This is not so.  Though many of the dishes make use of the standby Indian spices, they are in different combinations and strengths, and it doesn’t feel (or taste) as though they are all the same at all.

Earlier I had made mention to Rema and Jimmy, how delicious the ice cream and julab gamun was from yesterday, and it appeared on the table towards the end of the meal as well.  With this amount of food and the variety, I can’t fault the price.  There is enough to feed 4 people here, and it’s all spread out before me.  A couple of glasses of the pink water to wash it all down, and I was full and satisfied.
Here at the house, there is usually somebody near you while you’re eating.  They try to be available at all times.  I told the manager (her name is Rema) that I really appreciated the repeat on the desert and pointed to the table.  She was somewhat aghast.  I repeated it, and her surprise just increased and she’s now looking at the table where I’m pointing.  I then pointed directly to the (now empty) ice cream dish and said desert slowly once more.  Then she got it, and the relief melted her worry.  She thought I had been saying “lizard.” 

We had had a conversation a few days back about the geckos I’d found.  She said the last guest found an adult gecko in the room and had Jimmy come and catch it.  I don’t know how one would catch a gecko.  When they get the inkling to move, they do it quick.  I bet it would be about like trying to catch a puff of smoke.  Even if you could, why would you want to.  They eat mosquitoes!  Anyway, I had told her that I liked the geckos and she told me that people there call them “house lizards.”  She thought I was telling her there was a lizard on the table :).

After dinner, I sorted out a problem with the AirTel sim card which AirTel had disconnected.  I had to use Rema’s phone because all outbound and inbound calls were stopped.  The first guy I talked to told me I needed to go to an AirTel store and get a duplicate sim card made up, because mine had failed.  He kept speaking in Hindi though, and I kept asking him to speak in English.  Finally he put me on hold and about 10 minutes later a man who spoke English well came on the line. 

Miraculously, my sim was now not the problem.  He said they disconnected it because of address verification issues.  I had heard about this and it is why I purchased the sim at the airport because that booth wasn’t supposed to have the same problems, as it had some higher grade of acceptance coming from the International Airport for travellers without permanent Indian addresses.  However, when my entire balance suddenly ran out in Varanasi (remember that?) and I had to re-buy my voice and data credits, I think it switched to a different store, and that’s why they terminated it.

The second guy tells me that I need to go to an AirTel store in Delhi.  I tell him I’m in Kerala and that’s not going to happen.  He magically fixes the problem, and tells me that within 15 days, I’ll need to verify my passport with an AirTel store.  No problem.  In 15 days I’ll be in the United States of America and it won’t be an issue for me.

After the AirTel calls, Rema and I talk for about an hour about all kinds of things that are different and/or interesting, differences between America and India.  She answers some questions for me about the chairs outside (that have legs rests which are extensions of the arm rests), and I order breakfast for the morning at 9.  I tell her I’d like to try the boiled bananas that she told me about, so she makes a couple of calls and instructs someone to bring some bananas with them to work in the morning.
Now, I’m getting ready to take another shower.  The latest wave of oil has crept to the surface and I need de-glistened.  My hair still looks like I’m a pubescent 14 year boy who hasn’t showered in a week.

Tomorrow, I will hit the train from Alleppey, Kerala to Vellore, Tamil Nadu in order to reach Tiruvannamalai by bus.  The train gets into Vellore at 3:30a, so I’m sure I’ll have some waiting to do once I arrive.  Well, that’s assuming I make it off the train at the right station.  It will be the dead of night and the train only stops at my station for 2 minutes.  That’s not a lot of margin for error!
Hopefully the connection and signal will be better in Tiru than it has been here, where it takes up to 10 minutes to refresh my email inbox.  Maybe there I’ll be able to at least upload some pics from the last week.  We’ll see.  Til next time.

  
  
 

Kerala, Part II

**pics/vids added as of 6/1; post complete**

Well, I found out that the “Elephant Camp” was seeing the elephants and going on a short ride about 2 and a half hours from here, so I wasn’t very interested having done that already in a different part of India.  The village tour was actually a guided walk through the main drag of a small town like many others in India, and not an actual rural village like I had hoped (and would have been interested in), so that got scrapped as well.

What didn’t get ruled out was a non-motorized canoe ride through the canals of the “Venice of the East.”  I told Jimmy that I wanted to do the small canals and not the larger ones or the lakes.  I want to see regular Keralan people living normally, or at least the portions of their normal lives that are lived around the water.

What I saw on the 2 hours boat trip was exactly that.  Women were kneeling at the canal-side, scrubbing their morning dishes with a tuft of coconut husk as a scrubber.  Ladies with baskets of clothes and bars of soap, getting the family’s clothes clean.  Boys jumping around naked in the water, their mother telling them to get washed up and get out.

I saw “blue-collar” men in slacks and t-shirts, hanging plumb lines and making short walls with stones and mortar.  I saw 16 ladies, all laughs and smiles, using hoes and rakes to cut the vegetation away from the canal sections that bordered their homes.  I saw boys and girls, all dressed up, walking hand in hand on their way to church.

I saw people watching television and saris hanging on clotheslines.  I saw old men talking and people on bikes.  I saw kids that were smiling and waving at me, and one that reached out to touch my hand.  It was strange touching the boys hand.  Like two distant worlds colliding.  Why did he reach out, and why did I follow suit?  He followed along for the 50 feet of frontage that he belonged to.

Nearly every person I “met” along the way smiled at me.  They usually said “Hi” or “Hello” and not in the I-don’t-speak-any-English-but-I-know-hah-low kind of pronunciation.  It sounded pretty much like a regular American “hello.”  And it shouldn’t surprise me.  Kerala has the highest literacy rate of any state in India (91%).  It’s infant mortality rate is one-fifth of the national average, and the life expectancy here is 10 years longer than the rest of the country.  They also happen to have the first democratically elected communist government in the world.  The Keralan people freely elected the communist party in 1957 and it has gone on to hold power regularly (though apparently not constantly) since.  Something seems to be working here for these people.

From my venturing, Keralans seem to be the happiest Indians I’ve run into yet, and the friendliest.  All Indians seem to be highly social, but when I was on the canoe, the boat-wallah had brief conversations with about a dozen different people along the shore.  Granted it’s a small town where I am, but even in small town America, you don’t talk to people just because you know them or recognize them.

The canoe ride was an excellent experience.  I have some videos of the trip and I hope that some are good enough to post when I get to a place where I can.  Even the wildlife (though it didn’t seem very wild) was abundant.  Anything that has an excuse to grow, probably can here in Kerala.  Ferns and palm trees and stands of bamboo.  Huge white-and-green-leaved beasts that looked like prehistoric philodendrons.  Water hyacinth, lilies, and the occasional lotus.  Water lettuce, and duck weed, and red-root floaters were everywhere; in some places choking the little waterways nearly completely.

Birds of various shapes and sizes and colors and calls to match.  Small fish, big fish, gliding silver-surface feeders, and all the bugs that the bigger guys could eat.  I saw grasshoppers and butterflies and every conceivable species of dragonfly.  If there’s someone out there that studies dragonflies, you should come to Kerala because you will have enough to study for a few lifetimes.  Fat black ones and cherry-red ones and iridescent blue ones.  Powder blues too, with oranges and pinks.  Thin straight yellow ones riding two-up, and hulking red bombers perched on a log.  Dragonflies were everywhere, you could not help but be mesmerized by their colors and their aerial acrobatics.

I was originally scheduled to go on the canoe ride at 7a this morning, but a storm kept coming and going for a couple of hours until I gave up waiting and had some breakfast.  Shortly thereafter, the boat-man arrived and we were off on our cruise.  The homestay gave me an umbrella which I was thankful for, as I had my camera and my phone, and not 3 minutes into it, it started to rain.  That brief bit was the last of the morning storm, but boy was it heavy when it started.

The sky seemed to tear open, heavy, belly-shaking thunder and an absolute torrent of rain.  The winds seems light for the amount of noise and water the storm was producing, but maybe that’s how it is here.  There seems to be very little excuse for a Keralan to not have a clean source of water during this monsoon period.  It simply pours from the heavens, and in such quantity that you don’t even have to have a sophisticated collection device.  A simple bucket will do.

I had iddlis (fermented rice cakes) this morning with a coconut chutney that was my least favorite breakfast dish so far.  They also provided me with 4 pieces of toast (well, toasted on one side), and butter and jam.  Seems that everywhere in India they serve the same jam, and it tastes similar to strawberry crossed with something else foreign.  In America, if you go to a sit down restaurant that does breakfast, you will likely be given a little carrier filled with a true variety of jellies and jams: grape, strawberry, mixed fruit, maybe a blackberry if you’re lucky or an orange marmalade.  Here you can pick any kind you’d like too, as long as it’s the one flavor everybody has.  I buttered and jammed the bread-toast and ate all four pieces.

I asked for a very late lunch (or early dinner) as three meals here were just too many.  I ended up with gigantic prawns in a dry curry rub that were every bit of 6 inches long.  There were three of them on the plate, and I’m glad they didn’t put any more on there.  Three were more than plenty.   They were served along with “dirty fingers” which is a disgusting vernacular description of okra, which was sautéed with onions and butter and some Indian spices.  I also had dal and chapattis with tomatoes.  I ate my fill, which was quite a bit, and had some more pink Ayurvedic water.

I was kind of hoping for a sweet at the end, but I couldn’t remember if this was considered dinner or lunch, and either way, nothing appeared, so I went back to my room a few minutes after the table was cleared.

Not five minutes later, Jimmy knocks at the door and has a tray in front of him, carrying a small dish of homemade vanilla ice cream with a gulab jamun in the middle (gulab jamun is an Indian desert which is like a ball of fried sweetened flour and soaked in honey and clarified butter and flavored with cardamom and some rose water).  This little concoction was delicious.  The ice cream alone was fantastic, rich and creamy and sweet, and only partially frozen.  And fresh-tasting; the responsible cow was probably not a few hundred yards away.

Other than eating and canoeing, I read some DH Lawrence short stories from a book they had in the common area.  I got another shower because I could and besides, it’s already been two days.  I also came to realize that my initial apprehension of this place was based on my state of mind.  Coming from Goa, I was in a consumption kind of mindset.  I was feeling kind of driven to have this, have that.  And this place is not driven; it’s taken a couple of days to downshift again, and the resultant gear change has allowed me to get comfortable here.

I might spring for an Ayurvedic massage tomorrow for an hour for 1000rs ($20) since nothing else (itinerary-wise is tempting me).  I will probably walk around a bit along the banks of the river and see about some food or maybe an ATM.  I may just sit someplace and listen to people speaking Malayalam!

I’m not at all sad now that I chose Alleppey as my destination in Kerala, as I first thought to myself upon getting here.  A future visit to Kerala would start in Cochin, however, and branch out from there, now that I’ve seen the backwaters.

If there’s nothing else worthy of reporting in the next day and half, this will be my last Kerala post and I’ll check back in as time and connection permit in Tiruvannamalai, Tamil Nadu.  Otherwise, you’ll hear it here.

 

Kerala, Part I

**pics/vids added as of 6/1; post complete**

The train to Alleppey, Kerala seems long, and it is.  When I wake up, the train has fallen even farther behind, about 4 hours.  Somehow, we make up a bit at the end, and in Alleppey, I “get down” about 6:30p, which is about 3 and a half hours late.

I get off and a man approaches me.  He has a rickshaw parked on the back side of the station.  We haggle.  I think he can do better.  He says he can’t.  They all say they can’t.  We part ways.

On my way out, I try to locate the Cloak Room for future use (which I do, but it looks unattended), and see if the station has a pre-paid taxi stand out front.  They do.  I tell the man the name of my hotel, and they don’t know it.  I have a number which they call and get direction and determine the fare.  The fare ends up being more expensive than the first guy I negotiated with, but it always seems a bit safer when it’s coming from a pre-paid government stand.  I turned around to put my stuff in the rickshaw and the first guy was standing there smiling at me, not mean, but kind of like, “should’ve come with me…”  I lament a bit that I did not give the first guy my business, as apparently he was being honest, and I want to reward that type of behavior here because the deception in the haggle is huge.  But who knows if he’d have changed his mind when I got there, bumping it up a bit or what-have-you as has happened to me previously.

Regardless, it’s now dark, and we’re heading inland toward Pulinkunnu (pullin’ canoe), but it is said (like almost everything in the Malayalam language), really, really quickly.  I love the way this language sounds, it’s sing-songy and smooth, and it sounds like it would be fun to speak.  I could listen to it all day long, it sounds as much like music as it does language.

We arrive (after a few additional calls to the hotel) along a small dirt and sand lane, and pull up at a house.  I guess I should’ve read the descriptions a bit better because I was expecting a hotel.

There are several people standing there, and one of them waves the tuk-tuk driver in past the gate with a flashlight beam pointed on the ground.  I pay the driver and get out, a lady greets me and I walk in, but I must drop my shoes outside first.

This is a homestay, which means I’m staying in someone’s house, kind of like I did in Khuri with Badalji, but also completely unlike in Khuri with Badalji.  I feel completely out of place.  The house is very ornate and quiet with old wood carvings and chandeliers, and generally feels like you walked into your rich grandmothers house in Old England somewhere.

The manager lady asks me for my passport and tells me she will return it in the morning.  I object and she says she needs to make a copy of it, but that the copier is not available now.  There are pictures of Jesus and the Pope on the walls, and the place seems very staid, like the act of someone stealing a passport would be met with the penalty of death.  For some reason, I let her keep the passport, and I receive it back in the morning, though curled quite a bit from the astronomical relative humidity.

I ask if I’m too late for some dinner, and she outlines the meal pricing.  $2 for breakfast, $7 for lunch, and $6 for dinner which (except for the my splurges in Goa) is some of the highest prices I’ve paid.  I mean, in Haridwar, Nishant version 1 and I both ate dinner for a combined $1.20.  I’m kind of between a rock and hard place, though, because I’m somewhat isolated; it’s not like I can just walk out of my hotel into a busy street area and find 5 restaurants I can hit with a rock.  She wants to know if I’ll take my meals here, and what my “program” is, meaning what do I intend to do while I’m here in Kerala.

I tell her I’ll take dinner tonight and breakfast in the morning, but politely put her off on the future meals and itinerary by telling her that I will be relaxing first and decide later if I’d like to do something else.  She doesn’t have a problem with it.

Dinner that night was dal and chapatti and vegetables, and breakfast in the morning was uppam (fermented rice crepes) with green-pea curry and butter jam toast.  I ended up signing on for lunch and dinner and the following breakfast also.  Lunch was several dishes with boiled Keralan rice (which is a really fat short grain), and included Indian spiced beet greens and boiled cucumber in curds (I think) and some finely sliced long beans among some mango “pickle.”  Pickle here is not the same as a pickle in the United States.  A pickle here is a chunky sauce which is a very sour; you add it to a bite of entree for an extra punch in the mouth.  I have not yet had dinner for tonight, but am told it will be chapatti and dal and some vegetables again.  Granted it is all homemade by the male cook here, but it is expensive.  Every meal is served with a red beverage which is water boiled with Ayurvedic herbs.

In the daylight, the morning after I arrive, I get a much better sense of where I am.

There is a river right out the front of the homestay, and behind it are rice paddy fields, though there is no rice in them, having been harvested about a month before.  They lease out the rice paddy fields to a neighbor who farms fish in them for the other 6 months.  Fish waste (and any dead fish) create nutrients for the rice when it is planted again.  This is like crop rotation, but with water instead of dirt, and, well, with fish.

After breakfast, the manager has Jimmy give me a tour of the gardens which are beautiful.  I see two types of coconut (tender and curry), two types of banana, Jack fruit trees, and coffee trees.  There are tons of flowers and ornamental grasses and shrubs.  I imagine you could grow just about anything here, being that it’s sunny and hot and gets plenty of rain.  The monsoon season has begun here in Kerala, but it is not in full swing.  The dew point is nearly 80* Fahrenheit for those of you that understand that type of thing.  For those of you that don’t, it means that you take the humidity needle and swing it past stuffy, uncomfortable, and difficult, right past oppressive, and into downright miserable.  I might not have been lying to the nice lady about not having an itinerary.  It’s simply not fun to be outside.

Thank goodness my room has AC.  It has a fan too, and a four-poster bed, and both drapes and curtains.  It has French doors that lead to my own veranda with it’s own fan.  I have a 32” flat screen LCD television, which I might actually watch if I decide to stay indoors and a plug-in mosquito fogger.  The bedroom has a separate dressing room off of it, and a separate bathroom, but the bathroom is open to the outside via screened slots in the roof.  It feels sauna like in there, but it is neat to have the light and the sounds of the birds and insects coming in.  The hot water is solar she says, but when I showered last night, it went from blazing hot to cool and back again, about every 2 minutes (or about as long as it takes to get soapy and/or shampoo-y).  I’m not sure if that’s a “feature” of the solar hot water heating or not, but it was a bit annoying, and I ended up using mainly cold water to just avoid the fluctuations.

So, Jimmy shows me around the property and it’s nice.  The house is apparently owned by someone wealthy, and from what I understand, the owners don’t live here, but it in the United Arab Emirates, or maybe they are just in UAE right now on vacation or something and will be back - chalk it up to language barrier, but I’m not clear.  There are 10 staff here, and I’m the only guest.  I sit at a 10 person dining table and eat solo.  Well, until I ask Jimmy how to eat the uppam and grean-pea curry like an Keralan.  Then he sits down and makes himself one and shows me how to use my fingers to mash it together and soak up the juices.  He laughs when I tell him we scold our children in America for eating like this.  I find it interesting that with the majority of the population eating solely with their hands, that I always have to ask for a napkin.  I’m not sure what they are doing with their hands.  I will have to watch.

I ask Jimmy about his name, and he tells me it’s his Christian name.  I assume he means it comes from James in the Bible, as I don’t remember there being a Jimmy in there, but I’ve been wrong before.  He tells me he has a “given” name also which when he says it, sounds something like “a luke.”  Because he’s a Christian, everyone calls him by his Christian name, except for people inside his close family and they call him by his other name.

I’m pretty sure, however, that this is not how you get a “Bobby” or a “Tommy” from an Indian customer support call center.

I take some pictures of the gardens and of the architecture, which I like better here than in Goa.  I didn’t like the Portuguese influence at all, which I never knew til I got to Goa.  I liked the pastel colors and so forth, but the architecture over all didn’t do it for me.  In Mumbai, I thought it was amazing.  From the brief look I’ve had here in Kerala, its somewhere between ok and slightly interesting, but to each his own.

Jimmy shows me some small water features they have on the property.  The one in the front entry, over which I trod in the dark last night, has koi in it.  I see something big and silver in there.  He says “piranha,” but I’m pretty sure they don’t get that big.  He called the koi “goldfish” anyway, so I’m doubting his piscine species identification skills.

There are several options for itinerary that are provided/arranged by the staff, should I decide to go somewhere.  The interesting ones seem to end up around $75 to $100, which is about $74 to $99 more than I’d like to pay.  This place is a steal at $20/night, and I think the excursions and (definitely) the food, help subsidize the actual cost I should be paying.  The staff are not rude, but the manager and Jimmy have asked me several times and made some suggestions on itinerary that I have so far refused.

I could go out and find some things to do, even possibly some of the same things, and do it more cheaply, however, I feel the least able to arrange this on my own here, with my semi-isolated location and the ridiculous humidity combined with high temperatures.  And transportation costs remain high here as well, though not quite as bad as in Goa.  I will feel like a slug for laying around and watching TV, but I very well may end up doing that for a day or two anyway, slug or not.

I know that I will pull my rear-end out of the AC (for brief periods) to go on a canoe ride in the canals around here.  And probably also for a small village tour.  Those two things I will likely do, because they are of significant interest, don’t take too long (for the heat concern - I have plenty of time), and only about $30 combined.  The main draw for Alleppey is the absolute maze of little canals which until roads were built, served the population as the only transportation lanes.  Now, they are still heavily used but there is plenty of road traffic as well.

There are enormous houseboats with nightly price tags to match, but they don’t interest me because they can’t get into the smaller waterways, where you can see the native Keralan people doing their work and their play.  There are beaches here too, but beaches would fall into the been-there-done-that category for me at this point.  There is an “elephant camp” on the list of options also, but I’m not sure what it entails.  I love pachyderms, so I’m tempted.  But I’ll need more info in order to plunk down the cash and I’m honestly leaning away from it at this point.

So, I know that I will likely do those two things I mentioned, but further than that, I will have to see.  When I know more, so will you - in Part II.

 

Goa, Part III

**pics/vids added as of 6/1; post complete**

I got checked out of my hotel (“Beleza - by the Beach”) but my driver didn’t show.  The hotel brokered another car for me, and I talked him down some, but I still ended up paying $10 more than I had agreed to with the first guy.

We drove from Colva, inland to a spice plantation, where an informative and friendly guide walked me and a half dozen Indian tourists around a portion of the plantation in which representative species had been planted.  The whole plantation was hundreds of acres, thank goodness we didn’t have to walk around the whole thing.  The entire operation is organic; no pesticides or herbicides are used at all.

He showed us coffee trees (Arabica and Robusto is what it sounded like the two types were), and spices like cardamom and tumeric and cinnamon.  He showed us cashews and coconuts, bananas, vanilla, nutmeg and chillies, and a bunch of other things that I couldn’t remember.  I started taking pictures when he would show us something, but then I realized I would never remember what was what.  All kinds of things were growing here.

After the half-hour walk through the jungle, they poured a bout a cup of cold water with citronella at the base of our neck and it gushed down our backs soaking our shirts and saris.  The guys said not to worry because it wouldn’t stain.  In India, a stain is pretty low on the list of worries.  The water was some type of Ayurvedic ritual cleanser and besides cooling us down it had a bit of bug-repellent to boot.  Too bad we didn’t have the citronella at the beginning of the walk, though I’m not sure it works on fire ants which were the primary nuisance.  The guide then gave us a small sample baggy of some spices from the plantation, we’ll have to see if it makes it through customs.

After the water ladle, we ended up back at the reception area where there was a complimentary lunch buffet (I had started the tour in the same place after they gave me some hot lemon-grass tea and some “cheese biscuits” which were similar to goldfish crackers, but tinier and better).  The foods on the buffet were made using the spices from the plantation and the food tasted good.  A man served me half a shot of cashew feni alcohol, but I didn’t want any.  Another man came around with a tiny little dish of ice cream which I ate.  It was early enough in the day and I didn’t anticipate any exertion which would set my belly off.

We left the spice plantation in the non-AC car, and headed down to Palolem, which is a beach area about 25 or 30 miles from Colva.  The beach itself is crescent shaped (unlike the straight beach in Colva) and is supposed to be especially photogenic.  The trip took a while (most of the driving here is slow - around 25-30mph) and I fell asleep for a bit in the car.  Edwin, my driver, is a nice-enough guy, but he’s asked me several questions, several different times.  His memory must be about like mine.

We get to Paololem, and I’m seeing a fairly young crowd of Western tourists.  The accents are from the UK and from Australia and America.  And sounds like probably some French and some Dutch in there too.  Most of the foreign tourists are about 20 years old I would guess.  I’m pretty sure this was not the crowd I was hanging with when I was 20.  Lots of ripped muscles and tiny bikinis.  Lots of bravado and machismo and testosterone.  And plenty of alcohol, and I’m sure some other recreational substances.

The beach itself is beautiful.  The central part, where the main road enters the beach area, has the strongest waves, and there are lots of people in the water here.  Some people are on the beach, laying on towels, but most of them are in the surf.  I head North along the coast toward the top end of the crescent.  Apparently, parts of The Bourne Supremacy were filmed on this beach.  I’ll have to watch it again, I liked those movies anyway.

Farther north on the beach are some very large rocks, some of which are probably 15 or 20 feet tall.  A hill rises behind them and in front of them is a little island (maybe 20 acres or so).  Apparently you can walk across to it at low tide, and it appears to be low tide while I’m there, but I’m not chancing getting stuck while Edwin is waiting in the parking lot.  I told him I’d be back in about 3 and a half hours.  Drivers wait, no problem.  I guess the money he’s making is more than enough to keep him satisfied.  Besides, it’s a different culture here.  Waiting is just part and parcel of the whole.  In America, waiting is tedious and “a waste of time.”  Here, it’s just time, no wasting of it.

I find some peculiar designs in the sand that look somewhat like the balls a dung beetle will make.  These didn’t get here accidentally.  So I pull out my camera and take some quiet photos.  As I’m waiting and watching, little crabs start to come out of the holes.  They are the sculptors.  They are industrious in their little tube houses, like miniature stone-masons working only with mortar.

As I’m captivated by the artistic crabs, 4 guys from Alleppey (my next destination, about 15 hours south of here) become interested in what I’m looking at, and we start a conversation.  They offer me a “fag" which I didn’t realize was a cigarette.  The upper class people here smoke cigarettes and the lower class people smoke bidis.

We talk for a while and they inquire about my camera as one of them is a camera buff.  He says he has a high-end Canon which he really likes, but it’s too big and heavy to carry around.  I recite to him a line that I didn’t come up with, that the best camera is the camera you have with you.  He laughs because he knows it’s true.  That’s how I ended up with this camera, it won’t win against a $2500 full-frame DSLR, but it’s got a really nice lens assortment and high quality sensors and best of all, it’s small.

I answer all the usual questions and politely break off and head closer to the rock formations.  A couple of boys are sitting atop one of them, and I think that’s a good idea.  I climb up the next one and sit perched atop the boulder for about a half an hour.  Watching and listening.  To the surf.  To the wave-like undulations a little past the breakers.  To the beach dogs infested with biting flies.  To the seabirds in the shallows.  To the man, fishing with nets from his outrigger canoe.  And to the Western tourists walking by, bodies in the prime of their lifespan arc, tatooed and dreadlocked for effect, beers in one hand, smokes in the next.

I take some pictures as the sun starts to fade, and get down before I break my neck trying the dismount in the dark.

I find a beach shack with people occupying a few tables which are laid out in the sand, all the chairs facing toward the sea.  I sit down, alone (what will it be like to eat with people again?), and ask for a menu.  This place’s specialty is Thai food.  I order veg Pad Thai and it comes out about 20 minutes later.  It is actually very good Pad Thai which surprises me.

I still have some time before Edwin expects me back, and I don’t want to leave too soon and end up spending time at the train station.  If I’m going to have leftover time, I’d rather spend it at the beach, even in the dark just listening to the waves, than spend it sitting in a train station.

So, I order some fried banana fritters and they are good also.  The bugs are persistent, but one of the staff brings around burning mosquito coils.  They seem to help, but some of the bugs aren’t deterred, and so every so often, I have to swat at one or flick something off my arm or the back of my neck.

There’s a single man, maybe mid-60’s, the oldest by far of any Western tourist I’ve seen at Palolem, sitting alone on the table behind me and to my left.  He’s been nursing a Tuborg beer for 20 minutes or more.  In front of me and to the the left is a single, early 20-something man who is reading a book.  I wouldn’t be surprised if it was philosophy.  Directly in front of me sit a couple.  They are a destination couple.  They have only just met here in Goa, and they are spending time together because its convenient and they are attracted.  But you can tell from the way they interact that they only have a few things on their mind, and long-term relationship is not one of them.  He is tatooed all over his body.  Even his face and into his hair is tatooed.  I mean his whole face is tattooed, his nose, his forehead, his cheeks and lips.  His ears, inside and out are tatooed.  There is not a patch of skin (that I can see) that doesn’t have ink and his earlobes hang slack because the big metal spacer is not in the holes.

They get up shortly before I do.

I call for the bill and get it paid.  I ask to use the restroom which ends up being a western toilet bowl (no tank), sitting on a platform in a shanty.  When I walk in, the walls are moving, and things on the walls are moving.  Good thing I only need to urinate, besides, I can hit it from the doorway.

I walk down the dark beach and trip into some kind of sand sculpture.  I can’t make out what it is or what it says.  Or rather what it used to say before I crashed into it.

Back to the beach head, I find my driver and we head back up to Margao, which has the biggest train station in Goa, and is the place I get on the train to go to Kerala.  We continue our chat on the way and the conversation turns to his daughter who is 1st in the “English medium” school.  There are schools that are taught in the native language of the area (for instance in Goa, the predominant language is not Hindi, its Konkani); these are the government schools.  English medium schools are private schools that are taught using only the English language for the instruction in all subjects.

Being 1st in an English medium school makes him very proud of his daughter and Edwin is the most animated I’ve seen him.  I can relate. 

We get to Margao without incident, and I give him a chocolate candy bar that the waiter at the Thai place gave me in lieu of my 5rs change.  I tell him to give it to his daughter.  My action is only half-way thoughtful.  I had a Snicker’s bar in my backpack that gave me some headaches when it burst, melted and nougat-y into the seams of my belt pouch.  I’m not interested in doing that again, and besides, good for his daughter anyway.

I’ve timed it just about perfectly, so I only have about an hour before the train comes in.  Except the train isn’t running on time, and is scheduled (at this point) to be an hour and half late.  So much for planning.  India wins again like she always does.

I find a bench down the way while looking for the air-conditioned 1st class waiting room which apparently doesn’t exist.  I have a seat next to man and his 10lb bag of rice.  We don’t talk.  Neither of us is interested.  It’s hot here, but it’s not the heat that’s critical, it’s the humidity.  It’s so humid that I believe it should be impossible for the air to hold any more water without breaking lose a torrential rain.  But the rain doesn’t come, and neither does my train.

At least not until it’s 2 and a half hours late.  I climb on about 1:20a for my 10:50p train, somehow find my berth and get my bed made up.  It’s a 2AC coach which means in theory that there are 4 people in my section and I’m one of them.  There are already 5 people in my section before I arrive.  At least they haven’t commandeered my bunk.

My feet and crocs are still sandy from Palolem and getting the sand off of sweaty skin and rubber is an exercise in futility.  I get off what I can and climb up into the sheets anyway because I’m too tired to wash my feet off in the sink of the moving train.  That will have to wait until tomorrow.

And so the train finally heads south, with a sandier version of me asleep in my bunk as soon as my head hits the dirty pillow.

   

  

Goa, Part II

**pics/vids added as of 6/1; post complete**

I helped the rickshaw driver get to where we needed to go via my smartphone and the cached Google Maps section I had for Goa.  We pull down this tiny road, and I’m not really sure what to think, until we pull up to the gate, and there’s a guy inside a little shack that needs to open it to let us in.

I’m thinking, wow.  A gated resort.  Cool.  Keeps the riff-raff out.  Wait.  I am the riff-raff!

I pay the driver (all cabs and tuks in Goa seem to be about 5 times more expensive than anywhere else in India.  I’m not sure why, some people have hypothesized lack of competition.  It’s darned expensive to move around in this state!), grab my backpack, and head up to where it looks like I’m supposed to go.

The reception area is actually outside under a large open structure, but it’s done up like it’s inside.  Wood and wicker furniture, display cases, flowers, etc.  I have a seat and within a couple of minutes, a guy in a uniform comes up to me.  I say I’d like to check in, and he says sure, and then says my name with a question mark on the end, as if he’d been anticipating my arrival.  I say, why yes, indeed, it is I.  He says come right over here and have a seat at the desk.

I sit down and prop up my totally-out-of-place backpack.  He presents some paperwork for me to fill in, all the usual stuff, and a man appears on my left with a tray and a glass of juice for me.  I have no idea if its complimentary or not, but it seems out of place to ask, like if I actually belonged in this class of hotel I would know, so I take it.  I don’t know what kind it is, but it tastes good.

A few minutes later, the juice man returns (sans juice) and the registration man hands him my key.  The juice man grabs my bag like a Sherpa and we go find my room.  He’s a small guy carrying my big pack, and I’m just walking behind him, carrying this tiny juice glass like a king.  I thought, I could get used to this!

We go into a building just 30 yards away, and it looks like a common area.  Huge kitchen with a 6 burner gas cooktop, fridge, cabinets and counter space all over.  He shows me a little spigot to the left of the double sink and tells me that the water there is purified drinking water for the guests.  We pass through a sitting area with some couches and a coffee table, and there’s a heavy teak door with a old-style lock.

He opens it up and there is my room.

This is the cleanest, biggest, most modern thing I’ve seen.  This is the high-end, baby.  There’s a big king bed (which is one mattress, not two twin frames squished together).  There is a huge AC unit, a sliding glass door to my private patio that overlooks the quiet pool, windows with Roman pull up shades.  The bathroom has a hair dryer which I use after my shower because I can.  The shower has a rainfall shower head and piping hot water that doesn’t run out.

Yes, yes.  I could definitely get used to this.

In the first 7 hours I was here, I swam in the pool twice, went to the beach twice, had two meals, and had a four hour conversation with a guy and his wife from Montreal over some Indian beers.  The food is good (Goan sausage - spicy and great on a Goan bun), and the atmosphere is great.  People are yes sir-ing me all over the place.

I call up and they send a boy over to get my laundry and he shows me the minibar and snack tray.  They have Lay’s Sour Cream and Onion chips.  The have a tea maker in my room.  They have complimentary bottles of Bisleri water.

I end up having several good conversations with Fitzgerald.  I spend some time on the beach, both during the day and at sunset.  I have a Pina Colada and Prawns Vindaloo with a Goan roll (for about $7 total) sitting at the beach side cabana watching and listening to the waves.  I get in the pool.  I get in the ocean.  I get in the pool.  I eat.  I get in the pool again.  Then I go down to the beach.

These are my two vacation days in my Adventure.  My wife says I earned it. 

The hotel was a splurge at about 2.5 times what I’m normally finding rooms for.  But even at $70/night, this place is a steal in American money.  I don’t know how much something like this would cost in Hawaii for instance, but I’m pretty sure not $70/night.  You can’t even get a decent hotel with a pool in Columbus for $70/night, let alone on the beach in some tropical paradise with service like what I’m getting.

So, that is how my time is spent in Colva, Goa on the Arabian Sea portion of the Indian Ocean.  I had plans to look around, but I’m not interested.  I’m catching up on blog posts now, then I’ll go eat and see if Fitz is around.  Then I’ll sleep like a baby, and wake up in time to swim some more in the morning before another good breakfast buffet with fresh squeezed mango juice and fresh pineapple and tiny, delicious 3” thin-skinned bananas.

I will leave tomorrow, and I have negotiated with a couple of drivers for (OUCH) $50 to travel around some other parts of Goa tomorrow, like Palolem beach and a spice plantation, before hitting the overnight train down to Alleppey, Kerala tomorrow night.

So stay tuned.