Kerala

Well, I'm home now, in good old Ontario, and bored out of my gourd. I never finished blogging the last few places we went to, so I figure I'll do that now.

----

Arriving in Fort Cochin, Kerala, I was finally feeling better from my bout of illness. Everything about Kerala was a great change from Goa. Fort Cochin itself is the nice old, touristy part of the city, Kochi. We have learned our lesson about staying at places recommend by the Lonely Planet--they are generally over-priced and full of white people with their noses buried in their Lonely Planets. So we found a place just down the street called the "Taj Mahal Guest House", which was really just a person's house with a few guest rooms set up for rent. Actually, this meant that the room was unusually large and full of character, like we were just staying in someone's actual room.

Fort Cochin is known for its Catholic heritage, so we were sure to see the well-known cathedral and bascillica (whose names escape me). I really enjoyed strolling along the boardwalk the runs beside the Arabian sea. One of the things Fort Cochin is known for are its very old fishing nets, still used, which they call Chinese fishing nets. Here is a picture.

Walking by a market set up at night, we were offered all sorts of fresh fish, and even this giant, weird looking crab. We declined because we had just ate--fish and chips! It was delicious.

The highlight of Kerala was our house-boat. A popular thing to do is travel a couple hours outside of the city and get a boat to tour the backwaters. These natural canals made in the jungle by the rains. For a very good price you can rent a houseboat for a night, complete with your own cook and pilot, to take you through the backwaters. It was a very luxurious experience! The food was very good, although maybe it didn't set well with me, because I did not have a good sleep on that boat, even though our room was really nice. I was up all night with the Delhi Belly--not fun.

Pictures (the first is of the same kind of boat we saw near us):




To get back to Kochi, we took a bus rather than paying for a hired car. The people of Kerala were really nice. A couple boys helped us get on the right bus, without any expectation of recompense. It was very refreshing. I have been told that Kerala is one of the nicest places in India and I have no evidence to the contrary.

Leaving Kochi for the train station was one of the most dangerous occurances of our trip. We made the mistake of getting a rickshaw in the pouring rain, and at night. Not only did I get absolutely soaked, but we came close to death at one point as the rickshaw hit a giant pothole and one whole side of the thing actually left the ground. Pan-Pan and I were speechless with shock, and all the driver said was, "see, very bad roads". Yes, the roads were very poorly maintained. At one point earlier, after hitting another bump, we actually broke down temporarily by the side of a crazy, busy road.

However, in the end we managed to get to the train station in one piece, and waited for our very last train in India.

The train to Madras, on the other side of the sub-continent, was one of the longest we had taken. When we finally arrived, we went immediately to a bus station to get a bus to Pondicherry, since there was nothing we wanted to do in Madras. The bus to Pondicherry was also long--four hours--and though we thought we were getting a super fast luxury bus, it still frequent stops and wasn't all that comfortable at all.