Incredible India

Imagine today going into an ancient Egyptian, Greek, Roman or Mayan temple and seeing a ceremony performed exactly as it was done thousands of years ago.  This is what you see today in temples such as Brihadishwara in Tanjore.  Ceremonies performed there today were being performed when temples in ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and southern Mexico were still in use, by priests who are descendents of those from ancient times.

But the gods of ancient Egypt, Greece, Rome and Mexico are long dead; their ceremonies, chants and prayers forgotten in the mists of time.  Their temples are ruins for tourists and historians. The gods and temples of Hindu India, however, are as alive today as they were in antiquity.  Only in Tamil Nadu, India can you see a classic civilization in action.  This, to me, is the great thing about this place and why it was my favorite spot on our trip. 

A couple of times, in temples off the tourist route, Amy and I were invited into the dark sanctum sanctorum by the Brahmin priest, himself a descendent of the ancient priests, to see him perform the age-old ceremony…waving candles, chants in the original Sanskrit, the pouring of ghee and water over the lingum and the dabbing of sacred ash on our foreheads.  The sound, sight, smell and color of all this was remarkable and I felt something unique here.   Knowing that this exact same experience was had by people thousands of years ago was exciting and a feeling, or maybe an energy of some kind, enveloped me and I felt being transported back in time.

But a feeling of being in another time is not unique to the temples.  Where as in other parts of India much of the old farmland in the countryside has been developed into new neighborhoods full of high rises, call centers, fancy apartments and new businesses, in South India it is still mostly rural, unchanged from ancient times.  There are no fancy malls here, but there still exists villages with small roadside shops, coffee stalls and dirt roads. Villagers leave their newly harvested grain on the road to be threshed by passing cars.  It is in the south that you see the age old tradition of bronze casting performed exactly the same way, by the same families, for thousands of years.  It is here in South India that you can walk through a marketplace and be overwhelmed by the sights and smells that amazed the Romans and Greeks when they traded here millennia ago.

I loved everywhere we went and we chose our route well.  We were fortunate to choose South India as our first visit to this country, thanks in large part to advice from our friends Shuba and Ananth, who helped us a lot with choosing the places to visit.  Not only Tamil Nadu, but Kerela, where we could relax on the backwaters in a small village and and way up in the mountains on a coffee/tea/beetlenut plantation, seeing elephants working on their farms pulling out large tree trunks to the roadside and ancient Jain temples in the forest.  And Mysore, where we saw the 400^th anniversary of the great Dusara procession, which had elephants carrying great howdahs on their backs, transporting the descendant of the last Majaraja. Marketplaces are full of ancient shops run by the same families for generations.  Kashmiri shopkeepers all competing for your business, some quite annoying, others quite charming with great sales techniques.  Afterall, we bought a Kashmir rug from one of them!

After many years of avoiding India, because of all the stories of dirt, robberies and worse, we finally said to hell with that and went.  And it turned out to be one of our greatest trips ever.  We will come back someday, maybe next time to the far north, to the Himalayan states of Ladakh or Sikkim.  I can’t wait to again experience the crazy, honking traffic, the smiling faces, the odd head wobbles, the tasty food, the roaming cows, the ancient traditions, the great, old temples, the chanting priests, the busy markets, the friendly people.  The sights, smells, sounds that can only be found here.  Incredible India indeed!

a few last travel details

if you are traveling to India, a few quirks on travel


airports are a bit different: in chennai at least: first thing you must do when you come in is find out which bag screening queue to get into, do that get a sticker on your luggage that's being checked, then get in the queue for your airline departure itself.  While waiting in line send someone ahead to get baggage ID tags for all your carry on luggage and if leaving the country, to get the immigration exit forms.  Fill out fresh bag ID tags for each of your hand carry luggage!  Then even for domestic sites, go through individual screening separate lines for men and women. They will pat you down, and then stamp things all over your boarding pass AND your little luggage tags. make sure to do this or you will not board.

smiles: smiles from staff and customs folks in Indian airports and train stations are quite hard to come by.  keeping a solemn dour face and being brief and curt seems to be the order of the day!  don't know why.... (maybe our customs agents and tsa folks are the same actually)... sometimes, smiles can be freed if you can do the south indian sideways head waggle... but this is quite hard to learn, makes us dizzy!

for train tickets book 3 months in advance if possible, use the Indian railways site 'trains between cities' to find out your train #s, your 3 letter codes for the stations you want and then go to cleartrip.com to book it and pay with your US credit cards (the indian rails site only seems to take visas linked to Indian banks). Last minute train trip changes:  a few seats are released about 72 hours before the train leaves so you can sometimes get a last minute overnight train...

train station information: hard to come by... there is usually a person at an information booth who may be helpful and direct you to the right platform.. but they do not always know where your car will be...... there are fourteen different types of offices at train stations (station manager, platform manager, whatever) and finding the actual one who may have your bedding or finding some sign to indicate where your particular rail car is going to stop, is hard. Trains do have car numbers like "A1" or "S1" and they do go in order usually S1, S2, S3 but sometimes in reverse order... many stations have an electronic sign way up high above the train platform, facing the train,  that shows the order of the cars. some stations have painted bulletin boards that list the order of cars for each train.  Perhaps in Delhi and Mumbai there are actually the porters in red shirts you can pay to find your car... as the books say... in the smaller country stations we were at, forget it!

by the way if your train ticket says your seats are A15 and A16 it's not A 15 and A 16 it's train car A1, seats 5 and 6...  so if you absolutely don't know where your car will be, go to the middle of the likely train and watch the signs flash by as the train pulls in then run like crazy in the right direction once you figure it out.

hotels... some hotels have a check out time, but SOME still have a system where your room rate starts the hour you check in... so if you come in on an overnight train and check in at 5 am, then if you stay past 5 am the next day, you may owe a whole other night's stay, be warned!  usually  just as with our hotel there is a tax added on at checkout... and before you can check out if your hotel room had one of those little mini bars you have to wait for this to be checked so allow time...

traveling by private car and driver: hard to know what the charges should be, if your hotel arranges it you may be paying a bit extra... this way of traveling was definitely pleasant and less jolty than buses but still just as terrifying, as the one lane road accomodates 3 cars and trucks wide ...

traveling by local bus definitely fun, but so hard to find the right bus if you don't read the local script so allow time... and notice that the front seats are nearly always reserved for ladies so if you are a lady traveling with a gentleman, be prepared to split up for a while if need be...

the lap of luxury

Craig and I are home now, but had an odd adventure that prolonged our holiday for one day, and it was a good though strange day.

Our last day in Mahaballipuram/Mamallapuram was a very nice one.  There was a fresh rain coming in, and we wandered around the granite hills in the center of town that have been set apart from town because they are covered with ancient temples hewed from stone back in the 600s when the dying Roman empire may still have been sending trading ships in the area.  These temple/caves that are fronted with intricate columns hewn from the rock itself and with small 'cameo' portraits that sometimes look European, feel like the parthenon or the roman agora.  There are MANY of them, and to find some you have to walk west around the main known ones and you are suddenly walking through a natural forest, and finding caves, and due to the rain they have inhabitants - people getting out of the rain sleeping wrapped around an ancient lingam sculpture, and in one large pair of these temples, goats! goats getting out of the rain, baby goats butting heads in front of sculptures in niches.  And, even giant pigs in the jungly undergrowth. towards the back of the reserved area next to a large pond, stands a sacred tree of some type and at its base, small sculptures of the naga, the cobra, are covered with red and yellow powder like some kind of pollen.  wrapped in sacred cloth.

Anyway we had a great taxi ride in with a driver who was very curious about everything in our lives, to the Chennai airport which is pretty funky and dirty.... our last contact with Indian toilets that are not kept clean, we think... NO!  we realize there is some problem with the plane and boarding is delayed and then, suddenly, the captain says, no, this plane is not leaving you must all get off and collect your bags. WHATTT!!!!  imagine 350 very tired people at 2:30 am ... half of us have already taken sleeping pills... pandemonium, no one seems to know what will happen. I imagine sleeping in the incredibly filthy Chennai airport waiting rooms and grab a little airline pillow... there are huge crowds luckily we are at the front and they are asking for contact phone #s ... we don't carry a phone, what to do? the nice girl says, ok don't worry you are going to Park Sheraton the representative will appear and get you there.  We are freaking.Well after about half hour, in fact, someone does say, follow me and about 30 of us folks are herded by 3s into vans and driven... where?

Chennai is a busy modernizing city with actual sky scrapers, and lots of street activity ... in the city night glare things whiz by.. suddenly we turn into a driveway that has tire-puncturing defenses, then we get our bags and selves screened, and suddenly.... oh my god 7 star peace and luxury.  The hotel has lofty ceilings, golden details everywhere, absolute quiet, lovely women in blue saris making enchantingly nice comments about how well you look and they take us to one of their rooms.... the room has ten foot ceilings, exquisite molding and decor, the most comfortable king sized bed I've ever seen with soft cotton, your choice of pillows of the hardness of your choice, a massage reclining chair, a sparkling white bathtub., cotton terry robes and foot wear... three incredibly good restaurants written up in The Rough Guide as among the best in Chennai... and all of it is free for us. cocooned in luxury we fall asleep.... periodically, little one page updates are slipped under our door.  "The scheduled departure time for your flight is 045 hrs (24th early morning)" please find below your entitlements your meals are the following and enjoy the pool"...  "further to a call received from Lufthansa, this is to bring to your kind attention that your coach will be ready to leave by 01:00 hrs, requesting you to assemble in the lobby, for further enquiry please feel free to call the undersigned, Regards Shreyas Ladde Duty Manager"... breakfast lunch and dinner are these immense buffets of the very best indian veg, non veg food I've ever had... like going to Ajanta restaurant and getting your absolute pick of every dish.  Dessert is about 20 items: warm chocolate pudding, little tastes of every type of Indian halva like sweet, coconut ice cream, berry ice cream, mango ice cream, chocolate ice cream, creme brulee, and pastries.. During the whole trip I've been looking at little Indian sweets stores and wondering what they all taste like and now, I know...

We sleep, doze and eat the day away and go out for several hours to go to the stores Shubha recommended, including FabIndia where craig gets four soft, glowing cotton shirts and I get a stylish silk top or two, then to Pothy's department store which is crammed with women shopping for the upcoming Diwali holidays... we lounge by the pool in thick terry towels and we in the evening enjoy seeing the rich of Chennai come in to te hotel for engagement banquets or to go to the night club... young couples are kissing and giggling in slinky modern clothes in the quiet dark shadows of the garden... quite a scene!

anyway a little 24 hour taste of the luxury Indian hotels offer to the rich... free for us courtesy of Lufthansas airlines... apparently this is a 'seven star' luxury hotel....  for us, wow! quite a contrast from our 600 rupee room by the sea the night before!

Mystical Temples, A Fishing Village, and Lots of Poop.

One of the great pleasures of life is to eat freshly caught seafood on the beach in a small fishing village, preferably with your toes in the sand.  No toes-in-the-sand restaurants here in Mallamapuram, but great seafood in a restaurant right on the beach.  We drove here from Thanjore, capital of the Cholan Empire, yesterday and found a funky little two room hotel, room with a view on the Bay of Bengal, for 600 rupees (around $13 US).  But before we got here, we explored the area around Thanjore, hiring a driver for the day and going to many temples and the bronze statue making town of Swamimalai.

Darasuram is a small town about 40 kms outside of Thanjore with a beautiful Cholan temple that was built in the 11th century.  We got there at sunrise, as the light early in the morning and at sunset is the best.  The temple is situated in a lovely park and local folks were taking their morning strolls around the temple (always clockwise!!).  We were the only foreigners here (we're getting used to that) and had the temple complex all to ourselves.  This temple looks like a smaller version of the Thanjore temple with a large (55 meter high) pyramid.

As we were walking around the temple (clockwise!!) a man came up to us wearing a dhoti (sarong) and a shirt that said "Orange County Choppers" with a motorcycle on it and asked if we wanted to see the inside of the temple.  I asked if he was the temple guardian (I had read about temple guardians in our guidebook) and he said, "NO, NO, NO!!!  I am Brahmin priest!!!", which he then repeated about 10 times so I would be sure not to make that mistake again (a really big faux-pas I'm sure to mistake the highest ranking type Indian Brahmin for a temple guardian).  He took us into the sanctum sanctorum where he lit candles and put ash on our foreheads.  Very cool to be in the inner part of the temple with just candles lighting it up.  You feel so much history there.

From here we went to the nearby town of Kombakanam, where there are four temples.  These are the more modern ones with the colored gopuras.  We arrived as some men were carrying this large palenquin with what looked like a chicken on top.  I didn't think the Hindus had sacred chickens and when I asked a man what it was he said it was Garuda (mythical bird in Hindu-lore), but the ones we've seen in Bali look more like majestic eagles then the chicken like Garudas they have here.

So after 3 hours of temple exploring it was time for something, in the words of Monte Python, completely different.  We went to the town of Swamimalai, where they carry on the ancient craft of 'Lost Wax' bronze casting.  I"ve talked a bit about this in a prior post, but we went to a factory called Rajan and were given a nice tour by a guy named Suresh, who is a student bronze caster.  Rajan is a bronze casting school where they teach this 4,000 year old craft.  Suresh explained the whole process (see our previous post) and then took us in the backyard where some students had this huge model, several hundred pounds, wrapped in it's clay mold and getting ready to put near the fire where the wax would melt out through two holes (lost wax) and later would have the molten bronze poured in.  This particular statue was going to the USA.  Once the statue is taken out of the mold, then the artist cleans in up and puts lots of finishing details on it...

About 60% of the work is done after the statue is taken out of the mold.  Things like hair, eyes, fingernails, etc are done at the end.  We were taken to a little showroom and found a gorgeous statue of Saraswati, goddess of learning and Amy's favorite.  The thing to look for first to see how good of a carving it is is the face.  If the face is beautiful then the rest is bound to be beautiful.

When we got back to Thanjore we went down to the temple to catch the sunset.  What we didn't expect was a major Nandi fest going on.  Nandi is the bull that hangs out with Shiva and there is a HUGE statue of him here carved out of a single rock. It's about 35 feet high and there was a scaffold up the side which the priests climb and then they pour all this stuff over his head.  It's a yellow-green liquid and I think it may be ghee (clarified butter), poured over him from these large, 5 gallon containers.  So you are sitting there, among a crowd of hundreds of very well dressed Indians, looking at ol' Nandi with yellow ghee being poured over him, followed by water to clean the ghee off.  During all this is a little three piece band of drums and trumpets, a sound coming out of them like you've never heard as the sun is going down and the gorupas of the temple are glowing red.  An amazing site to behold.

Yesterday we came to our last stop, Mamallapuram, an ancient seaport town about 50 kms south of Chennai.  Tonight we leave for home at 1:45 am, but we've had a couple of days to look at the amazing stone carvings here. 

The carvings here are carved out of solid granite, which is all over the place  Most of it is from the 7th century!  These temple, shown above, were carved out of very large boulders and they are incredible.  A couple aren't quite finished and it is curious why they worked so long and so hard and just didn't quite finish the job.  Plus, these were never consicrated, according to historians.  The stone carving tradition continues here as there are stone carvers and stone carving shops everywhere.  They all make statues of different kinds from tiny ones, 1/2 inch high, to 10 food high Shivas.  The large ones are carved with electric tools, but the small ones are carved by hand.

Our little hotel has been a great oasis.  The second floor restaurant serves great fresh seafood and there is always a light breeze blowing, which is welcome in this hot, humid place.  Our hotel is non A/C, and the room was about 90 degrees all night, but thanks to some great sleeping drugs we slept through the night just fine.

Walking in this village and all over South India is a challenge.   The don't have many sidewalks here and the sidewalks they have are usually filled with vendors, motorcycles, or sleeping humans.  So you have to walk in the street and then deal with the traffic and thousands of other people walking in the street.  And then there is the poop.  Cow poop, goat poop, dog poop, and with all the humans sleeping outside...well, you just have to be carefull where you walk.  India has this little problem with filth.  It's pretty darn dirty in the towns and cities, not so bad in the countryside.  They just don't get the whole 'don't be a litterbug' thing here. People just throw their trash anywhere.  I think this comes from the mentality that someone else will clean it up, as the lower castes job is to clean up the trash and filth.  But there aren't enough of these folks, apparently, because India is certainly the dirtiest country I have ever been to. 

But you have to take the bad with the good and all in all there is much more good in this counrty then bad.  The amazing history, the exotic culture, the colorful, spicey and yummy food, the smiling and helpful people (at least those who aren't trying to sell you somethng), the easy and on time train system, the green, lush countryside...I could go on and on.  This has been one of the most amazing places I have ever been. 

Would I come back?  In a heart beat.

NO RASH DRIVING

"No rash driving" is one of the helpful signs along the roads of Tamil Nadu, along with "Avoid Honking" and "Don't Overspeed."   Ha!  No actually, drivers in South India have to be exceptionally good and careful drivers, because every 2 lane road can suddenly be a four lane road (your lane is the shoulder, all the others are coming at you fast) and speeds of traffic range from Oxcart pulling load of building sand to Supersonic.  Honk, honk!  We have become very used to this noise, which no longer makes us scared or think someone is mad at us or particularly cares what we do, except avoid them. And we spent the last 2 days with a very nice driver "Steven Raj" in a very comfy sedan with great shock absorbers.  The local countryside has been pretty, rice fields, rivers, bullock carts, bicycles, and towns which rarely get tourists stopping in them based on the excitement when Craig and I stopped at a coffee stand.  And I bought a pack of Maria cookies and made the mistake of offering cash in my LEFT hand.  shocked the recipient terribly. Since we don't have this custom it's SO easy to make a left handed mistake.

One of the great pleasures of the last two days is we unexpectedly stumbled into ceremonies at the temples we have been visiting.  Steven Raj took us to the temples we wanted to see, the incredible Darasuram which was deserted and lovely in early morning, and he added/suggested a few others that are especially venerated here, like the one in Swamimalai (which we sought out for its bronze casting).  Swamimalai  includes a very special temple on 3 levels up a hill. Quite lovely quite different

AND, the Swamimalaie has an unexpected bonus, just inside the temple there is a stand, it's Poompuhar, the state arts and crafts shop, selling really quality costume jewelry, at the entrance! Clearly not directed at us foreign tourists, and, I'm not quite sure why a woman Indian tourist would want to buy costume jewelry in the temple, but this was a great shop. And cheaper than the one in Tanjavur!  SO, I loaded up. fake rubies, fake emeralds and lots of "gold". Gold bangles, gold necklaces. The cost of true gold has gone so high, due to the economic crisis, that indian women who already have gold must be twice as rich. Everyone seems to know exactly today's spot price for gold! So, fake gold for me.

The last night we were in Thanjavur, we went again to one of the most beautiful temples there is, the Brihadishwara temple, where there was a large crowd and the priests were bathing the 30 foot high Nandi (the sacred bull that is part of Shiva, the lord of creation) in water, ghee and milk, over and over, with chanting and prayers, followed by some dancing by a male dancer in honor of Shiva and then some dancing by what I would call the 'keiki hula' - several troupes of local schoolage girls with lovely costumes and hair decorated with shiny ribbon rosettes and lots and lots of fragrant white and orange flower garlands.  And the day after, as we drove up to our final destination Mahaballipuram, Stevenraj took us to the country temple of Ganga...cholapuram, all that's left of the capital of the Chola empire after they had expanded all the way up to the river Ganges (!) (a REALLY long way), and there was an elaborate cleaning of the Lingam of this temple, and there was a wedding!

One of the cool things is seeing the blend of old and new.  Every temple that has a sacred object in the innermost sanctum that gets bathed in ghee or milk or water or all, has a drain that comes out the lower side of the temple, into a special tank.  Even though in many temples non Hindus can't see this, the tourist may suddenly see slightly orange buttery fluid coming down. Well this day in Ganga...cholapuram, they were cleaning the temple thoroughly for a major festival the next day, so, they had threaded a modern hose back UP the drain into the temple so that they could do a great precleaning! These temples are about as old as Chartres cathedral and have statuary as lovely as renaissance ones, and so to see a bright green hose suddenly alongside all the old stuff, is kinda funny!

For whatever reason, the wedding was one, the upcoming festival another, and people going to the city (we went through Pondichery which is a big town), we saw a LOT of lovely gold bordered saris on the women today,  one woman wore a midnight blue sari spangled with small gold stars and then the broad gold border, it looked like the night sky. it was Beautiful! and she was seated side saddle on the back of the motorcycle, holding on to her tiny baby.

During this trip, I have almost entirely been wearing Indian clothes, the Salwar kameez, which is a loose blousy tunic over loose trousers and with a scarf (dupatta) worn around the neck. Let me tell you the outfit's great but the scarf, TORTURE at times! yet not a single woman over the age of 15 ever, ever wears this without the scarf part.  In the car I'd whip it off but going into temples I had to quickly put it back on.  You can make it just a little less torture by spreading it out one layer thin... Anyway most of the time we've seen virtually no tourists and I've met another european woman who also wore the salwar, but, as we got to places more frequented by tourists, I'd see the women in their sleeveless tanks and shorts with white flabby legs, and it looked so creepy!  I totally recommend to try to wear the salwar kameez while traveling, I do think it got us nice reception, I think many times priests would invite us in to get a blessing partly for the kindness and partly for the expected donation but also because we were dressed right.  But now, we are in the first real 'backpacker tourist' town we have been in, and I am finally wearing khaki pants again! and little light tops with no dupatta!

While I've really liked trying out local clothes, it has made me VERY aware of its restrictiveness.  The men can wear light western style cotton shirts, and shorts; the women are really limited by the yards they wear and I feel 10 lbs lighter now that I'm out of it. On holiday, the upper class women tourists we met at the homestays quickly switched into jeans and shirts!   But in public, it was SO rare to see this.  So it was interesting to know how many of them wore both, and in relaxation mode, preferred the western stuff.  I hated trying to use the restroom, keeping all these blousy pants and long trailing dupattas and long tunics from getting wet in that already wet environment. it's truly an art to wear these clothes.  I need a tutor!


Mamallipuram:

We are living for 600 rupees a night ($13.50) in a great little hotel/restaurant in Mahaballipuram, a seaside town, it's a 2 story open air restaurant and we have one of two small rooms on the upper level, two twin beds, a fan and bathroom.  Warm! our first nights w/o A/C.  But we are so happy to have the sound of the waves in our ears at night and we get fresh fish and prawns twice daily for about $20 for a very large prawn meal.  Not super cheap but super fresh!!!

I quite like the sculptures at Mahaballipuram, they are spread out slightly as the town has a small granite hill, and several granite hillocks, and each of the solid granite hillocks that seemed appropriate for it, got carved into a temple, in AD 600.  And sides of the granite hills got carved INTO, to make manmade temple shaped carves, LARGE ones, with pillars all of which have carved animals in them (like lions, mostly).  And some of the large stones are carved into lifesize elephants, and larger than lifesize Nandi bulls.  Craig will I'm sure be posting stock photos of these.  The hillsides sometimes also have been carved into bas relief murals and they are so human. although they show mythical figures, they are in fluid motion and show family type scenes sometimes.  And one of the murals is about the way a hero figure did 'penance' which means doing a sort of torture in order to win special privileges to the gods... and in one corner of this, a CAT is smugly doing the same type of penance, in front of a group of admiring rodents! I presume the cat is seeking the power of overcoming its food easily.

Speaking of food.... our last day of Indian food for a while.  Craig has loved it, I've liked it. To me a disappointment has been that most dishes we've gotten have been basically potatoes, rarely cauliflower, and some green bean/carrot combinations. This is disappointing because in the markets I see okra, eggplant, chayote squash, and other vegetables for sale, and I have NO idea how to ask for these in meals.  And, here in Mahaballipuram, our restaurant which focuses on fish,  mainly has delightful french fried potatoes and can give me some curd (yoghurt) with cucumbers and spices, the local raita.  But I know that Tamil food includes other dishes and someday I hope to find them. I know Shubha's made them for us.

We have enjoyed lots of the food though, and especially some Chettinad dishes which are Tamil Nadu but contain meat.  Craig has loved everything, I think. I am just a bit overwhelmed by bread and potatoes, after having worked so hard to get my 20lbs off eating leaner food and lower carbs and fresh veggies.  So when we get back I am hoping to have some large recognizeable vegetables!  Artichokes, tiny green beans, and whatever is in my garden. And lettuce.

Today we have a few more ruins to see, as soon as it hopefully gets cooler, and may take a walk up the beach further than the current part which is a little stinky smelling, and have one more fish dinner and then, to the airport.

And, we are wandering around town, admiring the thousands of stone sculptures made here.  Those little lacy stone globes and eggs that show up in Berkeley that look chinese?  From Mahabalipuram!  Along with millions of delicately carved deities in black basalty stone, a green olivine stone and some smoother pale marbley limestony rock.  And, every other store is run by Kashmiris, who generally have their wives and kids still in Kashmir, and are here to sell you the local specialties as well as rugs, pashmina scarves, silk scarves, and 'it might be' silk scarves.   We met one of the Kashmiri patriarchs, a cool guy who sold Craig a great antique or maybe antique lapis ring.

Well this is already Friday, October 22nd, and it will be our last posting day because tonight, at 2 am, we start home!  for a full 24 hours we will be flying, and yet when we arrive in San Francisco, it will still be Saturday afternoon!

SOOOO sad to be leaving. We have loved this trip to India.  A whirl of color ful events and people, lots of very varied experiences, really lovely sculptural art, welcoming homestays with very cool people, a few surprise festivals and parades, and a great experience of this vibrant country which is so proud of its economic success and the place of respect it has now among the other nations. People love to hear that we like it and it's clear they are very proud of their technological boom and their educational opportunities and it's been really fun to have so many strangers approach us to get our opinion of their country.

In the Land of the Cholas

We are now in the city of Thanjore, in Tamil Nadu, after a 15 hour overnight train ride from Mysore.   The train ride was pretty good, although we were cramped in the side beds which are a little narrow and short, but somehow I survived.  It was a little smelly, being right next to the toilet, and the air con wasn't all that cold, but the train arrived on time in Thanjore and what a treat it is here.

Thanjore has one of the most beautiful temples I have ever seen.  Built in 1010 (1,000 years ago exactly) by RajaRaja the Great, it is one of the best examplse of Cholan architecture....



We arrived at the temple of 6am and the light on the solid granite pyramids was a light orange-red.  The priests were very busy doing their ceremonies and we were actually invited in to the sanctum santorum, which is usually forbiden to non Hindus, to receive a blessing.  We saw the very large lingum (this is a symbol of Shiva's you-know-what) and the priest put some sacred in our palms and instructed us how to put it on our forehead.  He then gave us a little package that contained some sacred ash, herbs and a banana (!?!?!?).   We walked around to another temple and again were invited in and this was a temple for Shiva's son.  More ash on the forehead another package with a banana and some herbs, and we were on our way.

This afternoon we went to the local museum, where there is an amazing collection of old bronze statues made from the "Lost Wax" process.  This is a very unusual way of making very beautiful bronze work.  The artists makes a mold in bee's wax, doing the whole carving.  Then he applies some kind of wet dirt over it and then wraps that with some linen or other wrapping material.  The wet dirt dries, creating the mold from the bee's wax.  Then the whole thing is heated and the wax melts out of the mold (lost was).  THen, in the holes that the wax came out of, molten bronze is poured in, cooled, then the mold is broken and, voila, you have a beautiful statue.  Doing it this way, the artist is able to make very fine detail, since he is working in bee's wax.  This is still done nearby in the town of Swamimalai, where we plan on going tomorrow.  We actually bought a beautiful example of a lost wax piece, of a dancing Shiva, or Natarasha.  It looks something like this...

Food, Elephants, Trains, Temples and HEAT!

Wow we only have about 3 days left here. SO sad. Today we are back in Tamil Nadu.- in Tanjore and then we hope to get on a train back to chennai but we are waitlisted.

We had some nice highlights our last day in the green city of Mysore.  we wandered over to the large vegetables market and met a charming young kid, Akbar, who promptly ensnared us with his smile and got us to go watch him make incense which was of course to take us to his family's oils shop!which dates back 3 or 4 generations.  We actually had a grand time, sniffing and testing wonderful fragrances and being charmed into buying little bottles of this and that.  Black Jasmine, Watermelon, Sandalwood. they do smell better than they sound!

We also went into the Raja's palace which was exquisite, huge arches and ceilings and lots of turquoise, silver, gold and lots of red carpeting. Gold thrones, that kind of thing.  Then, trying to escape the huge palace area grounds, we followed some folks behind a building and we were in the elephant stables!  The elephants were still painted from yesterday's parade, and many people were checking them out and the Mahouts and their families who live right there (being an elephant handler is an inherited trade) were allowing people to stroke them, sit on them, ride on them.  All very happy until somecop decided it was a bad idea and shooed us out. Shooed me out in particular by thwacking me on the back with a piece of cane or bamboo or something.  was kind of funny actually.  Then we watched some of the other elephants being bathed and cossetted and hand fed little bundles of hay. they really are beautiful animals. when you are eye to eye with an elephant and can't read its emotions and aren't sure how to communicte it can be a little scary! have great pictures of little five years olds so very scared to touch it and reaching out and touching and leaping back.

we continued to enjoy the cool fresh day there and ate some more fabulous food at Dynasty, this time lamb 'rogan gosh' and chicken/murgh chat paddi. all I remember is lovely deep orange brown caramel color on one dish and a redder spicier color on another.

then, another overnight train. we have learned a lot about the trains:  how to find out where your particular carriage is going to be is a big one so you don't make mad dashes along the track.  this train was an overnight 2AC. All the trains unfortunately are very dirty theynever wash them but the dirt is a dry old kind of dirt and so not too bad. the actual chairs and beds are quite clean, just not the walls and floors and windows.  The porters bring clean sheets, you have a pillow and blanket of unclear status but which seem clean, there are lights which take some learning, there are fans, there is air con -- SORT of. we descended down into the hot flats of Tamil Nadu and it was one warm night!

We are now in Tanjore or thanjur, every town has several ways to spell names based on how the English used to try to standardize it and then how the various languages reclaimed the names.  We had a fabulous early morning at the beautiful templehere that dates 1000 years this september. Craig is posting pix I see.  It's a bit warm here and defintely there is not as muchmoney as in Mysore - the saris women wear are quite different, the ones for sale are no longer the very fine wedding silk saris or even sophisticated prints they are more like ordinary fabricyoumight see in the US (for the first time; til now all sari stores have been a treat to gaze at.)

The town also has a terrific, if run down, palace, with thick walls and moorish arches which capture the wind just right. and an AMAZING museum of the lovely bronze statues and carvings from the Cholan empire in about 1400. . THese statues are so lifelike, they look like greek statues kind of! or michelangelo kind of.  beautiful.  we have many pictures.  

It being hot, tomorrow we are hiring a car and driver for $40 to go to a bunch of places andhopefully see a little countryside!  Among the treats we expect are another incredible temple built by the same Raja Raja who built the temple here, some temples with fabulous carving still in the site, and a village where they still prepare the bronze statues by making a detailed wax sculpture, burying it in clay, and then heating it til the wax melts. basedon how I feel today actually, I do NOT understand how the wax isn't melted to start with!  and THEN we may be going to the town market which specializes in excellent cosmetic jewelry! I already bought some 'emerald' jewelry today.

Sparkling Silks and shining lights - Dasara festival in Mysore

Wow, Mysore is a big change for us. having just been in the smallish town of Madurai, with its focus seemingly entirely on the temple, and then in two very rural homestay situations, to be in such a lovely functional city as Mysore is really fun.  Mysore was the capital of a very successful princely state. The Rajas here ruled for hundreds and hundreds of years, broken briefly by about 30 years of moslem rule in the 1600s or something, and they had a lot of wealth.  They every year for 400 years have had a procession which used to be for the Raja and to entertain his people he imported very special treats, like camels, and apparently spared little expense. so it's quite famous and remains so today although the Raja became only a governor in 1947.  People come from ll over south India. To Party! yes it's a quasi religious festivl but mainly it's fun. we just finished seeing the parade, I cannot describe how many rhythms, costumes, drums, dance troups, floats, horse troops, elephants make up the mix.  It's great and it's all in front of this incredibly fairy tale palace which is in a huge walled compound with many other palaces and temples. it's grand.

outside the palace area, the city spreads out in spokes and gardens, a design dating to the brief period of islamic rule, it's amazingly easy to walk and explore. and the climate's not bad either.  in the mornings we have gone out to interesting sites nearby by auto riksha, the country side is pretty. 

The women are lovely of course. The children are enchanting.  the men are ok. I've noticed by and large they are very nice but there are just a few of them  who do seem to leer a little bit when they don't think you are watching and sometimes also sort of paw their crotch area while leaning close to you.  I don't know if it's that's common I've read in India it can be hard to travel alon e if you are female. enough of that.

we found some really good food here! we loved the vegetarian food in Tamil Nadu and we've had excellent food at the homestays, and we had AWFUL food for 2 tmeals here at a place called Park Place. don't go there. but then we found the Dynasty. we just let the waiters select for us. Incredible. a fish with a cashew spicy thick sauce, a chicken dish with lots of lime or lemon; that was lunch; evenings they have a chinese style cook and he made some flat Malaysian noodles with veggies, awesome, and a spicy fish again. Marinated. Both meals were the quality of Ajanta in Berkeley.

Tonight we hope to go to a hotel, the Orchid/Metropole, in the palace the Raja built for his British guests a century or more ago.   We have found some nice silk here. Craig went to the local branch of FabIndia and got a really beautiful turquoise/blue striped cottn shirt, excellent quality with a sheen. really nice.

Every day I have been wearing the Salwar Kameez outfits I bought in Madurai and I feel much better - less like I stand out - especially when I see the European tourists in their shorts. So ugly!

we didn't mention the Gold Card. An expense of the Madurai festival is that to avoid crowds you are best off buying a quite expensive 3 day ticket called the gold card. For the evening music festivals, this literally gets you in to the very front section over a red carpet and onto some soft red couches!  the feeling of luxury sitting on these couches and gazing up at the palace while watching musicians who seem close enough to touch was superb.

However odd it seems to be buying such luxury, the alternative of wrestling with Indian crowds is worth avoiding.

Mama Seetha

Our 2 night stay in Wayanad, at Enteveedu, a lovely homestay run by Seetha and her husband who is a local landowner/grower of coffee, betel nut, ginger, pepper and formerly rubber and vanilla, was truly idyllic.  Craig started to describe how terrifying (and fun) our bus ride up the coast to this mountainy area was, with a busdriver who maniacally passed everyone on our road and stopped only milliseconds in each of the many small towns we came through, to discharge and take on local passengers. (This reminds me a lot of  theHarry Potter "Night Bus")  At the end of the ride we were in one of the main towns in Wayanad which is an area settled for many thousands of years but isolated due to having hill tribes keep control of it. now they are in the minority and it's a lovely rolling countryside full of small farm holdings, small country homes, and small towns, with lots of variety - granite domes that we'd call half dome and they call elephant rock, areas of preserved forests with wild elephants, working elephants, deer, bison and apparently tigers, rice paddies, rubber plantations, ginger fields and palm groves. there are elements of history that you wouldn't believe -- 'caves' which are really giant rock formations you can climb up into and through, which have ancient carvings from 5000 bc, and old Jain temples which are mystical, based on the 'square in the square', were an alternative to hinduism that was anti-caste, and have beautiful carvings. Somehow they made me think of masonic temples. and there is a history here of muslim sultans battling hindu rajas. and then probably english planters but they are long gone.

during our stay here, we had a great time because of both Seetha, and her guests.  She is a lovely tall lady with great presence and she made this homestay because about 5 years ago, the coffee and other crop markets completely tanked, her children were grown and she thought she could start the tourism business but only if she catered to families with kids. so the broad paved areas which surround her lovely house, which is way out in the country, these areas that were used to dry coffee and pepper, got little gardens and an outdoor firepit and have tricycles and kids toys. and some of her current visitors were 3 young professional couples traveling up from bangelore and chennai with kids. they were SO friendly.  Seetha's house has about six places to just sit and chill out, hanging swings, hammocks and coffee areas. you drink cofee they grow or tea that grows nearby and eat delicious food.  In the mornings she finds you a driver if you need one, to drive you an hour over to one of the two nearby wilderness preserves, where you go on jeep trips to see animals (though it's the wet season now and the wild elephants were not choosing to show themselves). there are lots of waterfalls to hike to, wet islands to hike on, caves to climb up to.  we had fun.

unfortunately we got an achy breaky stomach flu, really nasty fatigue and achiness, (which looking back on things we probably got from our nighttime visit 2 nights before to the country toddy shop which was a little dicey on the cleanness of the glassware and goods) and so we spent one afternoon down for the count. but our room was a great one. most of her rooms are normal ones but two are rooms with normal walls but the ceiling just bamboo, with enough openness to the outside world that all night long you could hear the lovely sounds of the woods, crickets and so forth, and hear birds in the morning.

Seetha took such great care of us when we were sick with tender concern, we rechristened her in our minds, 'mamacita' which is the tender term mexicans use for their moms (and for lovely little girls too).

The morning we left, her husband took us on this WONDERFUL walk showing us all the things they grow, and his brother still works with rubber so we helped press out some rubber sheets, and then in the woods we happened on an elephant hauling logs out to the one lane country road they live on, and we followed here into the woods to see her mahouts guide her in her work. Fabulous! and then, he showed us a truly lovely Jain temple in near ruins, very cool (we had seen a lovely still working one the day before but this one, with its tumbledown status, was extremely captivating), and took us to the local hindu temple which is a Ganesh temple and the priest gave us all a little blessing, before we went on to see his coffee plantations.

He told us that in the jackfruit season, actually their very own wild elephant makes a beeline to their property and at times, people have come back from not seeing wild elephants in the preserve and 3 have been active at the house.

then Friday morning, recovered, we went off to Mysore, were driven by the really nice driver she hired for us, Shidu, gently down through the forest preserve (again no more wild elephants, but there are really beautiful trees - HUGE clumps of bamboos, I mean really huge, like giant oaks or something, tall and feathery, and other trees, and monkeys) and then through some type of grain fields where the grain is spread on the highway for us drivers to help grind it to flour, then an open area still green but with a pattern of fields and windbreaks and cactus dividing fields and wide wide open valleys that made me think of the main Mexico plateau, and then into an area with sugar cane fields and very temperate plants and trees and then to Mysore.

Toddy shop in Allepey

today is Sunday and we are in Mysore. but, last Tuesday night, one of our final treats at Green Palms Homestay was that Maria's husband Phillip, who is a very interesting guy born on the island but with additional connections to Nigeria, Germany, the states and England where he now lives half the year, took Craig and me over to the toddy shop in the evening.

to get there you walk 1/4 mile around the island past the usual front yards of houses on the left, and river on the right. then you pass a ferry dock or two and then turn left where the log spans the little irrigation ditch and there is a nondescript cabin there and on the left side, there is like a breezeway, a covered roof area that is divided into 3 or 4 little cubicles with walls that start knee high and end above your forehead. Why? well of course so wives can't tell if husbands are drinking the toddy. Toddy is harvested from the coconut palm, but from the stems way up high where the nuts grow and not the nuts themselves. somehow in the process of collecting it, it self ferments into a cloudy white fizzy liquid with a slightly licoricey sour taste. not very appetizing at first sip! grows on you though. over a 12 hour period it clarifies and gets a little better but then turns quickly to undrinkable vinegar. to heighten your appetite for the toddy, you are served food if you wish: we know a TV program showed they served a spicy beef there, instead we got river mussel meat in a spicy little sauce. it was fun.

we really loved Green Palms homes, the island was a treat and Maria/Phillip's home had very comfortable very modern rooms with silent fans and/or a/c and a modern kitchen and lovely expansive living rooms with built in cabinetry.  the mother who we took cooking classes from, Anna or Anu, is very shy and still cooks the guests food in a small boxy dark slightly grimy kitchen when she need not. she is a sweetheart, I forget to mention that after we returned from the Allepey town, she helped show us how to make my favorite indian bread, parathas, also spelled porotas.  you make a slightly risen dough and then you keep rolling it on itself with lots of oil or ghee or coconut oil, something, so it's in flaky layers like a croissant. then it's grilled in a flat pan. delicious!

the next morning we got on somewhat of an express train, one with cloudy windows, air conditioning and only about 5 stops between two quite distant cities, Allepey and Calicut (we skipped cochin, no time).  Calicut also spelled Kozikhode, way different! more muslimi influence, and has hills quite nearby, the buildings are still mostly one or two story with steeply slanted tile roofs and some porches, but are more likley to have slightly moorish design elements. the shops in these towns have lots and lots of hanging dresses on display for the teens and younger girls who don't yet need to wear saris or salwar kameez or 'gowns'.  lots of ruffles, lots of glitz, very pretty.  also we see more and more women in chadors.  and lots of strict separation of ladies, and men, for example on the bus... craig and I hopped on a local bus up to our next destination, Wyanad, finding it at the bus station was QUITE hard due to the script all being in Malayalam, and found empty seats together ina  mysteriously empty row with one woman in the window seat - and, it was the LADIES row! so we sat surrounded by ladies, the men all safely behind us.

Head Wobbles, Nice Nuts and a Flashing Jesus

One of the slightly disconcerting things about India, at least when you first get here, is the Indian Head Wobble.  This is the unique head movement here; a sideways motion of the head that usually means 'yes', but can also mean 'no', 'maybe', and 'I have no idea'.  At first I thought a great majority of Indians had Tourette's Syndrome.   But then I realized that it was an affirmation, much like our nod.  I'm slowly getting used to it and have found that it almost always means yes or for some Indians is just something they constantly do while you are talking to them.

We are now in the city of Mysore for the big Dusara festival.  We haven't been to a computer in several days because we have just been too busy and are having way to much fun.  We spent two lovely days in the green forests of Wayanad, staying at a coffee plantation run by a lovely older couple, Seetha and Raju.  The plantation, Entee Veedu, has been in Raju's family for years and a few years ago they decided to make a homestay out of it.  Getting there was a real trip.  A nice 5 hour train ride from Allephy to Callicut on a first class express train.  Never worry about going hungry on an Indian train, as there is a constant stream of food wallahs going up and down the train, yelling "coofffeeeee!!!!", "maaaasssaaaallllaaaa!", "cuutttlleeeetssss", "chhhaaiiiii".  From one wallah we bought a package of cashews with the unbelievable brand name of "Nice Nuts".

From Callicut it was an crazy, fast, wild bus ride up the side of a 7,000 foot cliff with hairpin turns, drivers passing whenever they wanted to, horns blowing, and Amy and I crowded in to three seats with another lady that was hardly big enough for two.  As we were heading out on this dangerous and crazy ride I was please do see, right above the first row of seats, a flashing Jesus, red and green lights blinking away.  It looked like something you would see on any Mexican bus, but here in India it was a little strange.

It's really nice to have a respit from the crazy, hot, fast, loud, wild India.  And that is what these middle two stops have been , both in Kerela.  Wayanad was so beautiful  Our homestay looked out on a plantation of ginger, coffee, beetlenut trees, and more.  The highlight of the two days there was when Raju, the owner, took us on a two hour walk.  He took us through his plantation, showing us his different crops.  Then up on the main road we came upon an amazing site.  A couple of wallahs were driving an elephant, who was pulling some large tree trunks down a muddy path to the road.  It was really great seeing how the wallahs drove the elephant, one on his back, the other with a big stick who would touch the elephant and give her directions.  Just down the road from this was a 1300 year old Jain temple, still standing, with beautiful carvings all over it.  Just incredible.

It was here at Entee Veedu that Amy and I finally caught the Indian crud.   We were bound to get it at least once, and I'm glad it happened in such a nice spot where we could just lie in bed and read.  Withing 24 hours we were well again and arrived in Mysore on Friday.

The busy town of Mysore is most famous for its Majaraja Palace plus the annual Dasara festival.  This is a huge thing here and is at the end of Navaratri, which started 9 days ago.   People come from all over South India to see musical events and a big procession.  We bought a special ticket, the Gold Card, that would let is in to these events and give us some pretty good seats.

Mysore is much bigger then any other city we've been in in India and now we are seeing the true crowded, wild, crazy, fast India we've all heard about.  Just walking across the street you take your life in your hands, as no driver really gives a shit about pedestrians.  But after awhile you just kind of figure out how to cross streets (mostly you just follow locals across) and it really isn't all that bad, except during this weekend Mysore's population has practically doubled due to Dasara.  Friday and Satruday night we went to some concerts at the Majaraja Palace.  Friday there was some lovely old Moghul type music, very old, very melodic and beautiful.  An older man sang with a backup of a couple of drums and some kind of keyboard instrument.  The drummers also did a lot on their own and they were really something.  The next performer were Veena players.  The Veena looks like a guitar, is played with a steel, but sounds like a sitar and has that rather strange Indian beat and tone that is hard to get used to for the western ear.  At least my western ear.

The highlight was today, the big procession from the palace.  They built huge grandstands that must have sat 50,000 people, but probably more like 100,000.  The procession was really an Indian version of the Rose Bowl Parade, with floats, marching bands lots of strange percussion groups, and best of all...ELEPHANTS!!!!  The elephants were all painted up and had there gorgeous saddles and head jewelry on.

Mysore is much different then what we have seen in the far south.  For one thing, there are many more muslims here and a lot of the women in black burquas with only a little slit for the eyes.  I've noticed that most of them, along with most other folks here, tend to stare at Amy and me a lot.  There aren't a lot of Europeans here, so we kind of stick out.  In fact, in all of South India we've seen very few Europeans. 

The streets here in Mysore are a kick to walk in, especially when you get off the beaten path and walk down some back streets.  Amy and I went off the main road and went down a market street (again the only white folk in site).   People would stare and mostly smile at us. Kids would look at us with there large, black eyes and when I'd smile at them they would all smile in return.  Cows are everywhere, of course, mostly eating garbage on the streets.  It's always a strange, but very Indian, site to see cows walking down the main boulevard.  Of course cars go out of their way to miss them, as opposed to practically running over any human being they come across.   One of the streets we walked down was the metal ware street and every shop had large copper pots, pans, plates, etc.  One shop had some workers outside banging away at some beautiful large copper pots.

In an Indian city like Mysore, there is no such thing as silence.  I can't figure out why everyone here isn't deaf.  The constant honking of horns, music turned up to maximum volume, people yelling at each other, sometimes because they're mad and sometimes just to say hi.  The calling of prayer 4 or 5 times a day.  And I thought Mexico was loud.  India is Mexico on steroids. 

India is crazy, wild, hot, crowded, fast, colorful, noisy, smelly (good and bad smells...combinations of incense, flowers, exaust, piss and shit), historic...all in all great, wonderful, exotic.  After a week I'd say we are getting used to it and are really, really liking it.  India sure isn't for everyone, especially doing it independantly like Amy and I are doing it.  But it really has a lot of what I like to call "Toto" moments, as in "Toto, we're not in Kansas anymore".

Kerala Backwaters

Wow. we are staying in a superb situation, a wonderful homestay on an island in the kerala backwaters, with no cars and fabulous people taking us all over this little place while they meet and greet all their friends who live here.

The thing 'to do' when you go to Kerala is to take a houseboat, right?  Oh, so, wrong.  We see these monstrosities chugging by every evening and every morning, with bored looking Indian and european travelers, and we see them moored next to our island, unable to get off, and we see them taking long distance photos of the wonderful sights we are seeing:  laughing children, moms scrubbing dishes and clothes by the water, school kids coming home in their handsome graceful uniforms, the postman riding his bike through the puddles, the goats munching under the laundry.  This is a great place. The island we are on is huge, it's 37 km around, takes about half an hour to walk across in the most direct option, probably hours to walk it lengthwise, and it's a maze.. it is penetrated by small canals, big canals and in the center, a lake. it's freshwater and the land is protected from the river by a low cement wall, and during high water it splashes up on to the dirt pathway that rings the island. all along the edge of this island are houses, churches and toddy shops, one deep, and immediately behind them, after each households useful coconut palms, pepper vines, chocolate trees, mangos, jackfruit etc etc, are acres and acres of beautiful open rice fields, huge fields with ripening grain right now.  There are cats and birds, no dogs, there are NO cars.  the largest path, 3 could walk abreast. Our hosts, Thomas and his sister Maria and brother and their spouses, are a large extended family who have been running this for about 15 to 20 years, and their goal is to share their lovely island in a way that creates jobs and harmony. and it's really fun.

We arrived by train to Allepey and took their advice, of coming up by tuk-tuk half an hour into the countryside.  our cab driver wasn't quite sure where to go so we saw a lot of muddy driveways and churches (it'd been raining for 2 weeks straight but now sunny) and then found the right place, a riverbank with a waiting canoe containing about 6 people in saris.  And a tranquil bearded guy who looks like a Jesuit priest or a saint who turned out to be, Thomas!  he actually let us blither a bit with each other about how do we get the canoe to come after us, then introduced himself.  he is so sweet and calm.

it's an interesting family. the family are originally syrian christians, who have been here for well over 1000 years, but a few are now catholic, one close family friend is born again and the matriarch's brother we learned is an episcopal priest who has retired from Boston to Pennsylvania! go figure.

most of the island including this family are christian rice farmers, there are many hindu familes also.  most people live pretty simply, they get up in the morning for example and brush their teeth next to the river and bathe there. but everyone also has a clean drinking water supply that they are actually using, in pipes by the river, and people seem pretty comfortable. most people have enough money to send their kids to the many private schools, and the most poor have a government school and one of our guides, Binu, was explaining about the kerala welfare system which offers discounted food and free health care to the poorest.  Everyone is a little reserved initially but pretty cheerful about our being there and when we go out on guided walks with Binu, one of the men there, a painter, and also with Thomas, we change from feeling like tourists, to honored paying guests who are welcome to be there. it's a really nice nice service that Thomas and his family have created, where the locals benefit from our curiosity and we get to see a lot. we went 4 km today, along canals, along the river, and later came home in the many public ferries, long roofed boats, very comfortable and fun.  we've also been ferried home by canoe from one of our evening walks, by Thomas in the front, another guy steering in the back, and both of them singing to us these neat call and response folk songs that the women used to sing in the fields to make the work of rice farming less boring.

Oh yeah and Binu. Binu is single, incredibly handsome, and recently converted to the Church of God so now he has a dilemma, at age 37, of how to find a wife educated enough for his taste and able to be enthusiastic about his future if he goes for the ministry.  He's full of surprises. He showed us how to make a kazoo out of a leaf, how to blow bubbles with the sap from a stem, how to make a necklace with a star on it from a single twig, how tomake a little purple flower stick to your shirt like a decoration.

The name of this place is Greenpalms, also called Thomas's homestay and it's in the township of Chennamkary which you get to by the ferry up from allepey, which takes an hour and a quarter to go just a few miles by zigging and zagging across the river, dodging those enormous hideous turtle like houseboats which are like suburbia gone wild... it's so totally something we'd recommend. today we got a great cooking lesson also from Thomas's mom, whose name we dont know we just think of her as tutu. to see her cooking with turmeric, coconut, her own garam masala spice blend, coconut oil galore, in woks and also on a wood burning stove, so much fun! we learned a lot about why the food we eat, tastes so very, very good.

Backwaters of Kerela

Except for Bali, there are more shades of green here in the backwaters of Kerela then anywhere.  We are staying in a homestay called Greenpalms Homes, in Chenemkerry, about 10 miles from Allephy.  We are on an island, surrounded by slow moving rivers of fresh water going down to the nearby sea.  The water floats by very slowly and there are all sorts of canoes, large water taxis, small cargo boats and these large god-awful houseboats.  These houseboats are very popular and have only been around for about 20 years, but there are close to 1,000 of them and they are big, loud, polluting and hated by the locals.   They look like something out of "The Hobbit", kind of neat at first but you quickly get tired of them as they are constantly going by and making a lot of noise.



But other then that, it is very nice here.  The owner of our guesthouse takes people on walks through the village and the rice paddies. Thomas is his name and looks remarkably like Father Damien.  He is a very gentle soul and is a Syrian Christian, which is an orthodox church.  Everyone knows him, of course, so walking in the villages we always stop and the children want their picture taken so they can see it in the camera.  Thomas told us about the history of the island and the way the farmers grow the rice.  The paddies are actually below water level and they have a big system of irrigation with canals.  Half way through our walk we got on a canoe and Thomas and the boatman sang duets of old Kerelan folk songs.  Gliding through the water and looking up at the stars and moon (the sun had set at the beginning of our walk) was quite magical.

This morning we went on another walk with Binu.  He took us a little further around the island and again, every one knew him and all the kids wanted their picture taken.  Binu knew a lot about the local flora and fauna and he pointed out all sorts of trees, plants and animals.  We had breakfast in a small home and of course ate  with our hands, as you are supposed to do here.

We also had a cooking lesson from Thomas' mom and she taught us how to cook different curries and spicy fried fish.  This we then had for lunch today, along with stir fried cabbage, potato curry and about 5 other dishes.  They serve you well here!

The midnight train

So, on Sunday night, after a final meal at the Hotel Park Plaza's rooftop restaurant, of Chettinad mutton and chicken, we checked out and went to the train station.  A little word before that, about the Park Plaza and other hotels. It's a nice place.  we paid about $75 total a night including a dinner, and 3 breakfasts, for a very comfy room with AC overlooking (well, blocks and blocks away) the temple complex, as well as the local communist party office (that's actually a good thing, in India) and a rooftop under construction where the work crew actually slept, in blankets, every night under our gaze.  It had those nice things that are so helpful... a sewing kit, a little collection of paper clips, every convenience you need including a nailfile, qtips, and of course, hair oil. I've learned that many Indian men seem to have a preoccupation with avoiding dandruff, thus there are lots and lots of ayurvedic potions on sale to prevent that. anyway, first time I've thought about hair oil since the Victorian era.

Anyway. The train.  it was so fun.  We spent lots of time worrying, trying to figure out where our car would be, whether we'd get the bedding I'd just requested from the Station bedding supervisor who wouldn't let me pay for it, said pay some name I couldn't figure out, so I could not figure out if we'd get sheets, or not. Why we needed sheets:  Most Indian air conditioned sleeper cars have sheets, but this was an unusual class, First Class non Air conditioned.  these are old cars, each window is perfectly open with 3 horizontal bars just like the general second class, but you can seal it with a metal grill. each room has 4 very roomy bunks. We shared with a retired MD and his wife, he's from the capital of Kerala and she's from Madurai, and we communicated kinda sorta barely because obviously she doesn't use her english a lot.  but we got joined briefly before we got rolling by a fascinating egomaniac, a guy who is apparently a well known movie or tv star from Kerala. "Everyone knows me, I have such a lucky life."
anyway luckily he soon left and we slept quietly ovrnighton our rocking little train and when we awoke, our fellow passetners left at their station and wehad 3 more really fun beautiful hours rolling through the delightful palm filled Kerala countryside.  lots of tiny towns, we stopped at every one.  Lots of variety now, instead of just women in saris and salwar kameez there were muslim women in headscarfs, christian women in 'nighties', these very victorian mumu dresses. which being soft and flowing are definitely what I'd ilke to wear when it's hot!  we loved our train ride in our historical little car.

One Crazy Bus Ride

For our third and last day in Madurai we decided to do day tour up to the hill station of Kodaicanal, which is about 120 kms from Madurai and situated at 6000 feet elevation...a great place to cool off from the heat of the plains.  We paid our 295 rupees each (about $6) for the all day tour and lunch.

The guide (I use this term quite loosely)/bus driver came and got us at the hotel, barely grunting in recognition.  When we came out of the hotel, I looked to the right and there was this lovely modern bus waiting.  Unfortunately, the guide headed to the left to this old, dilapidated 1950s era bus.  We got on and there was incense burning and Ganesh on the dashboard.  Every other passenger was Indian, so of course during this trip we stood out like the sore thumbs we seem to be everywhere.  After going around in circles for one hour picking up passengers, incense still burning away next to Ganesh (my favorite god in the Hindu pantheon, by the way) we were on our way for the 5 or so hour bus ride.

A note here about driving in India.  In a word, DON'T.  Hire a professional or take public transport. You see, the way Indians drive is a bit unsettling.  There are rules of the road, of course, but nobody, I mean nobody pays the least bit of attention to them.   The rules of passing, speed, one way streets...all the rules of driving are meant to be bent, broken, or just not obeyed.  At first this is very disconcerting, to say the least.  But after awhile you just go with the flow and leave up to fate if you will make it to your destination or not. 

The drive up to Kodaicanal was something.  Driving along at a pretty good speed, another bus decided to pass us, even though he could plainly see a large dump truck a few hundred meters ahead plowing right for us.  Nobody slowed down to let him by and he made it around us by centimeters.  And this was another bus filled with tourists.  Our driver wasn't quite as bad, except for the occasional passing on a blind curve going up this 6000 foot mountain. We had a couple of nice stops on the way, including one for the delicious Tamil coffee.  This is coffee where milk is the liquid and the coffee maker takes the hot milk, pours it through some coffee powder and then pours it into another container from way up, stretching one arm high and the other low, so the coffee can pour through about 1 meter of air, landing in the lower cup and frothing into sweet coffee goodness.

We made a few stops along the way to see waterfalls and valley views, getting a whole 10 minutes for each stop.  "Waterfall, 10 minutes only", Valley view, 10 minutes only", "Museum, 10 minutes only".  But when we got to the chocolate/massage oil/tea store where they make a big fat commission, "This stop, 20 minutes!".  I wonder why?

Finally getting to our destination, we had a rather lame thalli lunch (waddya expect for $6?) and then got to walk around the lovely lake there.  By this time we were talking to our fellow passengers..most being from Dehli and a couple had been to the US.  All nice folks.

The way back was quite exciting.  We had a train to catch at 11pm, giving us several hours of time when we got back.  But about 80 kms from Madurai there was a huge bang underneath our bus and it turned out to be a problem with the gear box.  So the rest of the way we drove at about 35 kms per hour as the bus driver couldn't get it out of 2nd gear.  But we made it with time to spare and all in all had a great adventure.

Mr. Craig's Wild Ride - our tour to the hill town, Kodaikanal

Our very last day in Madurai, we booked a tour through the state tourism board to Kodaikanal, a former british hill town retreat that's now a lovely place to go to cool off. wow, is it lovely... it's about 6,000 feet up, satisfying granite hills and cliffs covered with luxurious growth, with some enormous waterfalls.

But that was not the highlight of our trip. The highlight was the trip itself, beginning with the bus. when they picked us up at our hotel, we went out and there was a big shiny giant tour bus. wow, we thought. Then our guide turned... left.  behold, our bus.  A vintage deluxe schoolbus type bus with the original velvetee plush seats covered by ripped plastic, an ornate ceiling decor of velvet curliques, and rococco silver columns separating us from our driver, on both sides.  and our dashboard, featuring a small ganesh statue with ribbons of incense smoke going upwards, and a giant plastic pterodactyl, and a squirrels' tail.  really fun.

Anyway our other misconeption was that this trip might not be fully booked since we had barely seen 2 other europeans, at a distance, in this big city. Wrong! it was full of tourists - from all over India. It was full and initially we thought no one would interact with us - people kind of looked away. but there was the most darling year old baby next to us who was pure delight and she was kinda interesting for us to see because she'd just had her little head shaved, something done both as an offering, in some families, and to encouraqge the hair to become thicker darker and stronger, as we learned was this family's choice. she LOVED her daddy.

anyway, we managed in this ancient feeling bus to have a great, safe trip, all the way 2 hours of town in the flat landscape with gorgeous hillls rising directly out of the flats, as if the landscape had poured flatness on top of a mountain range, and then up an hour of very dramatic climbing, leaving behind the palm groves and scrub and up into pine forests, ferns and familiar english style flowers (all imported from India I'm sure). Like profuse lantana.  Not that the country before the hills had been ugly, far from it... it was full of small towns with brilliant jam packed markets, and little stucco houses painted peach and turquoise and blue, on their fronts, and on each side, a bright yellow orange with lots of advertising in black letters. Accepting an advertisement means you get paid AND your house gets painted! next time we have to repaint one of our houses maybe I can find someone who wants to make the side of it a billboard.

One of the best things that happend on this trip was lots and lots of coffee.  after on the road for 2 hours we stopped at our first 'ten minute stop'.  well.. the bus conductor spoke limited Hindi, which our felllow passengers said they barely understood, and none of them spoke the local Tamil.  And we spoke NOTHING. so the conductor would talk at length and everyone left the bus.  The first time this happened we did not realize that nearly everyone around us were educated english speaking tourists from the big cities, and we could have asked them... I think because the bus was such a strange spectacle and cost so little - the WHOLE day including 12 hours trip, 3 free meals, was only 295 rupees, or $4.50.  So we got out at this stop, a little restuarant with outdoor coffee stand and soem bathrooms, bewildered, because 3 or 4 other tour buses were there and I worried ours would drive off if we did something wrong.

Luckily nothing like that happened and soon we were maknig friends with our fellow passengers. We went up to this town which was quite peculiar: it's majorly Christian, with also about 1000 tibetans. So on the granite cuts on the side of the road, as we went up, were written, in english, FREE TIBET,  LOVE TIBET and TRY JESUS.  no graffiti just encouraging phrases.  and when we got to the town it was full of christian colleges, episcopal churches and Tibetans selling cheap shawls.  It was actually lots of fun. a chaotic little town with the usual trash and deteriorating sidewalks, a little lake with swan boats, and a walk to a vista called 'Green Valley overlook' which involved wlking past a gamut of about 30 little stalls selling tourist geegaws, ending at an overlook carefully fenced in with chainlink fencing so you would not jump off, and -- fog. utter, complete, white out at the end of the road. so we just had to walk back through the salesfolks, down to the sunny valley. it was pretty wild.

Slowly we got to know our fellow travelers and their kids, it was so fun. they were all there on weekensd from Delhi or Bangalore and one family had been in Atlanta for 4 years.  And they all, like us, had trains and buses to catch that night. SO.... when the aged bus got down the 6,000 foot hill, and onto the flats, and a loud BANG was heard, and the gearbox broke, we had lots of companytrying to figure out just what on earth to do. And it ended up being fine... we limped back to Madurai at 20mph on the side of the roads and the freeway, and made our train. which is the next story.

Toto, I have a feeling...

we're not in Kansas anymore. 

Amy and I are in Madurai, in the state of Tamil Nadu, in South India.  After a 11 hour flight to Frankfurt, 9 hours to Chennai and 1 hour flight here, we finally made it.  This place is unreal.  Wild, colorful, exotic, crazy, beautiful...I could probably think of a lot more adjectives to describe this place.

One of my favorite things on any foreign vacation is the first morning, when you take the taxi into town from the airport, especially in a place like this.  You see the daily life and here that is folks riding in carts driven by huge horned oxen, ladies walking to town in their beautiful sarees, kids going to school in their uniforms, which for girls is sarees or salwar kamees.  It really jolts you suddenly to the fact that you are in a different place.

Madurai is most famous for the Meenakshi temple, dedicated to the god Meenakshi, (who is Parvati in most of India), consort of Shiva.  It's big...five square blocks of corridors, inner temple rooms (where the non Hindus can't enter), lotus ponds, thousands of gorgeous statues, walkways, and of course the colorful gopuras which have literally thousands of pastel colored carvings on them. The largest of these goporas is about 60 meters high and you can see them from any tall rooftop in town.



This morning, our second day here, we got up at 4:30 and walked down to the temple.  At 5am the priests have this interesting ceremony.  You see, Shiva and Meenakshi are put in a special inner room, the sanctum santorum (off limits to us fer-ners).  Since they are man and wife, they make them very comfortable so, basically, they can do it each and every night.  This is really good for the continuation of the planet, apparently.  But at 5am the priests burst into their room, put them in a covered palanquin, wth curtains so you can't see them, and march them over to another room, where they can meet the faithful during the day.   Hindus can go into the room and pray to Shiva and Meenakshi.  Then, at around 9pm, the priests put them back in their palanquin and take them back to the other room so they can have another night of bliss. At the 5am procession this morning, we were the only white folks there.  I guess I can understand that, but this is really something to see.  There is a little three piece band that follows them around with a wild, blaring horn and some drums.  They march very fast through the temple and some of the brahmin priests are carrying torches.  They stop along the way and play more music.

My other favorite thing about the temple is the elephant.  You give him a rupee coin, he puts it in his trunk (then quickly hands it to his keeper) and then he gently blesses you on the top of the head with his trunk.  He does this all day, many times per minute and always seems to really enjoy it.  Small children sometimes are frightened and many women reel back so as not to have the elephant mess up their beautiful hair that they have been working on all morning. Some, like us, stand and have our picture taken with him and he just keeps his trunk on your head while the picture is taken.

Of course you have to take off your shoes before entering the temple.  That's fine, and they have a place where your shoes are guarded, but the only slight bummer is that, especially after a rain, you are walking through mud, spit and dog shit.  So you have to try to at least walk around the dog shit, which occasionly is cow shit.

Besides temple exploring the main thing we've done here is gone shopping.  Well, Amy has done most of the shopping.  The ladies outfits here are quite beautiful and Amy especially likes the salwar kamees, which is a long tunic with matching pants and scarf.  Today we went in what I must say is the busiest, most crowded, crazy as you-know-what shop I have ever been in.  It's called Pothy's.  It's five floors of absolute madness!  There were thousands upon thousands of shoppers there.  You really could not move in the aisles without pushing people around.  I could not believe my eyes, but in a country of over a billion, three hundred million people you are bound to get some crowds here and there.  But somehow, some way, Amy was able to find some nice shirts and a salwar kameez.  I even found one of those nice long shirts the men were here.

When Amy is wearing her salwar kameez, the local women really love it.  We were sitting near the lotus pond in the temple last night and some local young ladies came over to us and sat down and then giggled and talked to us a bit.  Then they wanted their photo taken with us, which we happily obliged.  This is another thing....you'll be walking around and then a group of local folks will come up to you and ask to have their picture taken with you.  This kind of suprised me at first, but now I'm used to it.  We do kind of stick out here.

There are just some things here in India where you have to go with the flow.  The main one we've found so far is riding in an auto taxi, basically a tuk tuk. First of all, the horns.  The drivers' hand is pretty much glued to the horn and he constantly blows it.  Another thing is the fact that every two seconds or so, he comes really, really close to having some kind of accident; either running a pedestrian or cyclist over, or getting hit by a car, but somehow, some way he always avoids the accident...usually by inches.

Oh, and how can I forget the food?  Traveling is all about trying the local cuisine, among other things.  The food here in Tamil Nadu is mostly vegetarian.  I've said for a long time that if all vegetarian food was as good as South Indian vegetarian food then I could almost be a vegetarian.  Almost.  We've had some real tasty treats here.  My favorite was thali, at the Anna Meenakshi restaurant.  Your plate is a big banana leaf.  A guy comes around with some big pots full of tasty food and plops some on your plate, along with rice.  You usually have three vegetables of some kind on your banana leaf, most covered in a delicious spicy sauce.  There are no utensils as you use your fingers (right hand only, please!) to scoop up your food and plop it in your mouth.  It's best to look at how the locals do it.  They have all these little movements with their fingers that can gather up just the right amount and not make a mess of it (like I kind of did).  But it's just a matter of getting used to it.  So we had this thali, all you can eat, a big bottle of water, a lassi (yogurt drink) and ice cream for about $3.50!  And we were the only foreigners in the place, which is typical for us somehow.  Tonight we just had a lovely vegetarian meal in a hotel and topped it off with cold coffee with ice cream.  Another thing that I like about the south is that they are coffee drinkers.  I'm a coffee drinker myself and not am not really fond of tea.

Tomorrow we are off to a hill station for the day and then it's the backwaters of Kerela.  Hopefully we'll find a computer.

bumper cars and holy cows and brand new shopping centers

We have been in India now, for nearly 48 hours. What fun!  We are in Madurai which is a small city about an hour's flight south of Chennai/Madras.  Today I gave up on the idea of walking much in the heat and so we are taking auto-taxis, 3 wheeled open air jobbies, and it is SO fun.  the streets here have almost no cars, and just bikes, motorbikes, pedaled rickshaws and autotaxis... and cows and people!  The little autotaxis turn on a dime and everyone is moving as fast as they possibly can and so the taxi is constantly squeezing in where there is no space then turning on a dime. It feels just like being in bumper cars. And have yet to see anyone hurt. These people do not need video games, they live one every second.  At least the auto drivers do.

For the most part this city feels like a small town the streets can be hectic but nearly everything is 2 story and there are no large boulevards, instead there are big streets small streets and tiny alleys. In the alleys life seems to be very traditional, there are lots of people sitting around chatting and people hand pumping water from the neighborhood source and walking around with large loads on their heads.  And lots of the things we expected to find are here (including cows in the streets eating plastic bags, tasty vegetarian food).  And in the most part, everything focuses on the main temple, which has these amazing tall towers you can see for miles, and  which is surrounded by pedestrian only streets and around it, life is fairly calm. And we have been to many temple processions and have been focusing on the traditions of South India and eating delicious food off banana leaves with our fingers.

But today we got catapulted forward into India's future, by visiting one of the newest stores in town, a five story chain store called Pothy's with glass elevators, escalators and literally thousands of excited women customers.  Oh, my God.  It is like Filene's basement in Boston.  I loved it. they have beatiful clothes, saris and salwar kamise and other nice tops where they take the best of the handloomed fabric and golden borders and turn them into stylish things.  And so many people there ooing and aaing. And lots of people clearly getting their first experience of escalators and elevators. So many that when we went up our escalator, it just stopped when we were 2/3 way up. I think from groaning under the weight of the folks.

Craig and I seem to be just about the only foreigners around most of the time. oh, we have seen a few; but mostly this is off the european tourist track at least right now.  and we are trying not to stand out but given Craig's height and light hair, forget it! To blend in myself -  I have ditched my easy-dry pants and hot weather shirts for salwar kamise - the long top, loose trouser and scarf set that originally were pakistani. having done so, now that I am 2 adys into it,  I feel free and easy and all the women are smiling.  Since we are spending a lot of time in the temple and I could never drape a sari, this is the closest I can get to blending in with the beautiful rose, green, and silver saris of the women.  Here if you wear something muted or short you are gonna stand out.  If you wear something brilliant and flowing then you can blend in.  What I can't do though is match the prettiness of the local women or feel quite comfortable putting the fragrant white flower offerings made of champaka blossoms that they put in their hair.

Our trip into India started when we got on the plane actually -- lots of people on our plane to Frankfurt were Indian businessmen connecting with Indian bound flights there, like we were.  We arrived in Madurai yesterday morning, after landing in Chennai, spending 4 hours in an airport 'retiring room' we rented, and then flying to Madurai.  We did not know what to expect, it's a pilgrimage destination, and this is holiday time. turns out that not that much is happening, just people are happy and going to the temple a lot for special prayers.  In fact, there is not a lot for us to Do actually in Madurai, there are not a lot of touristic things, just the temple, walking, looking and eating.  the restaurants are few, most people eat from sidewalk shops; there are no sidewalk cafes in fact for the most part, no sidewalks! there are supposed to be but everyone's motorbikes, construction gradu, and whatever is in the way... as a pedestrian you share the roadway with the tuk-tuk 'autotaxis' and the cows.  It's been a good place to get acclimated to India, to experience the chaos, start to see little things like the street sweepers.  There is just a little tourist shopping:  on one street, about five different Kashmiri-run antiques, rug, jewelry and souvenier shops cater to foreigners, everyhing else is oriented to the Indian tourists who come, mostly they buy saris and hand loomed fabrics. We like it. So far we just have met local school kids and have exchanged a lot of laughter with Tamil folks.  And try to figure out  how to make out each others' very different accents when speaking English. Our longest actual conversations have been with a very nice Kashmiri sales guy, Aqshik, who runs the Madurai Gallery, who we'd recommend if you come here.

Craig has done an excellent job describing what we have done & eaten.

My one image that I want to remember is going into the Madurai temple complex for the first time.  The place is an enormous walled in area and you go through massive stone walls to come in to a series of huge collonades. so its cool and fresh in there, even though many people may be coming in and out and even thught in the first collonade, there are lots of stalls selling religious gee-gaws and bags and bells and flowers and offerings.  it seems to have nests of these collonades.  it's nearly all roofed.  There are many temples inside it, both big and small,  and only a few areas open to the sky so the impression is of mysterious sculptures, perhaps covered with red powders or wax or ghee, seen in flickering candlelight, while now and then you hear a small music trio creating eerie varying rhythms with a drum, a horn, and sometimes people chanting and in some parts, musicians singing ragas.  There is one area open to the sky for sure, which is the holy bathing spot, should be a deep rectangular tank with steps gonig down in, and along it collopnades and above them, the colored gopuras reaching to a very blue sky at times and sometimes dramatic thunderclouds.  Every temple can be walked around clockwise, along very high ceilinged collonades, and here and there are niches with different hindu gods. there is a meditation room... there is a fascintaing rock carved into 8 or 9 parallel small columns of rock inches thick that when tapped with a phone, play different notes like the notes f a gamelan.  There is every saint... this keyborads getting the best of me and jetlag is making me fade... til later!

 Tomorrow we plan to go on a tour up to the hill country, because our next move is an overnight train to the coast, to Kerala.  Really to see Madurai you only need a day or two! So our 3rd day we will be up in the highlands then on to the Coast.