Snapshots of a Trip

Meeting in Bangalore

I spotted her through the milling morning crowd at Bangalore station, all 5 feet four inches of her. “Allo Tushar.” The blue backpack seemed entirely too large for her delicate frame. But all her earthly possessions for the next seven months ‘around the world’ trip were packed inside it; three pairs of clothes, toilet case, Simone de Bouveir’s ‘Second Sex’, her mom’s old battered camera, some odds and ends and her most prized possession, three blue coloured juggling balls. I was kitted out in similar manner for the trip ahead, except that my backpack was a lot bigger and stuffed with more clothes than hers for the 10-day trip ahead.
I met Josie Ann in Bombay through a common friend. She was a quiet but friendly girl from Quebec. As we got to know each other better we found that we had a lot in common. The love of travel, for instance. She was new to India and wanted to travel. We decided to travel to God’s own country of Kerala. But before that she went to Igatpuri for an intensive 10 day course of Vippasana meditation while I was busy tying up some loose ends in Hyderabad.
We planned to meet in Bangalore and proceed from there.
I had a rough idea of how we were going to travel through Kerala since I had done the route with another friend some years earlier. The morning we met at Bangalore I took her to GVK Kamat hotel just across the station and over a plate of idly’s swimming deliciously in red sambar and steaming hot filter kapi I told her the plan “Let’s go to Mysore and from there enter Kerala and gradually wind our way down south.” She was ok with the plan. So we walked down to the bus stand, which is just across the road from the station. On the way she taught me some basic French sentences, not that French would come much in handy in Kerala. But still…

Mysore Medu Vada

We reached Mysore in 3 hours after a bad road trip and insipid conversation. Mysore is a small town with a lot of yoga schools where foreigners flock in search of instant karma. The other thing about Mysore is the proliferation of vegetarian restaurants that have‘plate meals’ signs hung outside. I had to explain the concept of south Indian meals to Josie. She nodded with satisfaction. We headed to the Maharaja’s palace, backpacks in tow.
You can see the golden dome of the palace from a long distance off when you walk down the approach road towards it. As you proceed the palace slowly surfaces into view like a great hulking yellow beast. The anglophile Wodeyars who ruled Mysore in the nineteenth were a pretty emasculated lot after Tipu sultan who ruled a century before them. The British had enough problems subduing the fiercly independent 'Tiger of Mysore' and decided to install an effete bunch of pliable rajas. They built a palace made of gold so that the rajas would be ensconced in it with their harems and nautch girls, too busy to disturb the brits empire building project.
The palace is a splendid work of art. Guilded domes, latticed artwork, Venetian phalluses and kamasutra friezes in stone testified to the raja’s preference for sensual pleasure over statecraft. The palace is built in both oriental and occidental styles. It is what a typically nineteenth century Irish architect straight out of the peat bogs would have imagined an Indian maharaja’s palace to be like.
A long corridor inside has paintings of nineteenth century life in Mysore: a royal procession with the Wodeyar mounted atop an elephant, fireworks during dusserah, a court scene, women in the royal harem arguing animatedly over who would get to bed the king that night and so on. Moving on is a second corridor that has some breath arresting European artwork: Women in different stages of undress, a still life of a bowl of fruit, a chiaroscuro of cobbled streets, European city life. In the middle of this these two intersecting corridors is a massive hemispherical dome with gigantic chandeliers hung along the ceiling.
Seeing the entire palace would take a whole day and since we didn’t have time to spare we bid adieu to the Maharaja’s and wound our way out. It was already mid afternoon and we had had nothing to eat since breakfast. Moreover we had to be in Kerala by evening. We walked into Bendre Kamat family udipi hotel and ordered two plate meals.

The Pleasures of Wynad

We reached Kalpetta that evening. Kalpetta is the main town in Wynad district. It is a one street town, charming though. We searched for the cheapest joint in town and found a run down lodge that charged 40 rs per night bed bugs and all. No hot water. It was February and freezing cold. But who needed hot water!
The next morning we headed out of town. I had come here two years ago. There was a beautiful, virtually unknown waterfall 15 km outside kalpetta. We decided to head there. We took a local Kerala transport bus. I normally am not chary of bus travel, but Kerala busses scare the shit out of me. The drivers drive like there’s no tomorrow. The roads are narrow and bumpy, but they won’t let that get in the way. Its like being on a rollercoaster ride. But the drive to Suchipara waterfall is stunning.
Wynad is hill country dotted with beautiful coffee and pepper plantations. As the bus wound its way through the mist-kissed peaks I could see the green valleys below. The cold breeze brushed against my hair and cheeks gently teasing me.
To get to the waterfall you have to get off 3 kms before the town of Churanmala and walk 2 km through coffee plantation. This is the most magical part of the trip. Imagine yourself at a crossroad in the middle of nowhere. Plantations dot the hillsides as far as the eye can see and the diffused evening light blankets everything in a surreal tint of ochre yellow. A chill wind blows in from the misty mountain-tops and rustles the leaves of the tall pepper pods and coconut trees. When you exhale a fine mist billows out like thick cigarette smoke, except that the air is pure, so pure that you come alive with joy and verve. For a moment you can leave all your worries behind. Close your eyes and take in the scene. It will be preserved forever in a corner of your brain like a photographic image to be called forth whenever needed.
We walked slowly to the waterfall. It is in the middle of a forest and virgin, except for the lays packets and cigarette butts that litter the place. I got into my trunks and Josie got into shorts and t-shirt. We descended into the pool of water at the bottom of the fall, which was surprisingly deep and cold. We swam around for half an hour avoiding the jagged rocks that jutted out of the water like wicked teeth. Later we dressed and went back the same way.

Drinking and drunkards

The next day, on our way to Calicut, we went to pookot lake, which turned out to be a disappointment. We had visions of a virgin, unspoilt lake but what was on offer was far from it. It was a touristy thing, of a sort all too common in Kerala, complete with ice cream wallah and lemon drink orange drink man. We turned back to take a bus to Calicut. Just beside the highway we saw a stream that had been dammed into a small pool. It wasn’t very deep, but enough to wallow in. So we did our strip act (not the full monty, sorry) and jumped in.
A bunch of boys was already in the pool. They took no notice of us. In fact they were quite welcoming. A middle aged man watched Josie and me from the edge of the pool. He was bearded and wore spectacles. He asked josie where she was from. When she replied Canada he mumbled “Oh nice, nice.” It was clear that he was drunk from the way he was talking. The boys in the pool too indicated this, putting a finger to their temples as if indicating that he had a few screws missing. He kept trying to chat up Josie.
Drunkenness is nothing new in Kerala. In fact, along with strikes and suicides it ranks as Kerala’s foremost social problems. When you have a state where there are few jobs, but plenty of remittance money to go around coupled with cheap liquor it’s a recipe for an alcoholism epidemic.
But this bloke didn’t seem dangerous, just looney. He kept offering to put us on the bus to Calicut. He proudly informed us that he was half nepali and half mallu. How that particular mix of bloodline came about I have no clue. We took him up on his offer and he led the way to the bus stop, stumbling on his feet. It seems he was well known in that little village because when we went past the Kerala Tourism kiosk the woman manning it saw our little party and slapped her hand against her forehead. At any rate we got our bus and waved him goodbye.

Calicut Adventures

After Calicut our next destination was Munnar. There was a late night train to Aluva for which we had no tickets. Josie and I agreed to travel by the general compartment. That night, after a beer each in a cheap ill-lit ‘blackhole’ of a bar, we arrived at the station, luggage in tow. The train trundled into the station an hour late. The general compartment was so packed with people there was no space to get in. We were caught in the horns of a dilemma. Get squished or miss this train, in which case we would have to spend another day in Calicut. The train was ready to leave when the luggage van, next to the general compartment, was thrown open by a rag tag bunch of dozen youth. Josie said “Lets get into the luggage van.” My heart skipped a beat when I saw the raucous gang of boys.
“Are you sure?”
“yeah, c’mon.”
By this time the boys had caught sight of us and they were gesturing to Josie to get in. Some held their hands out and my feverish imagination thought that someone let out a joyous wolfwhistle. Josie jumped in and I had no option but to follow. It was the only chivalrous thing to do.
The train trundled out and we were alone with a gang of boys from Mallapuram. I was terrified and half expected a rape, or at least some serious molestation. In the event, I was proved wrong and that train ride was one of the most amazing train rides I’ve been on.
The boys were warm and friendly and asked Josie and me where we were from. They shared their stories and beedies with us. They were all friends who lived in different parts of Mallapuram, the Muslim majority district of Kerala. We spent a happy three hours together and exchanged addresses and photographs of each other. One of the boys, Zubair, was a cook who specialized in making Malabari biryani. We exchanged notes on Hyderabadi and Malabari biryani. When the time came to say goodbye the boys begged Josie and me to come visit them at their homes and said they would never forget us. We continued to travel in the luggage van till the guard shooed us out.
I learned an important lesson that night. There are a lot of real and imagined fears and often we confuse the imagined fears for real fears. Often life is not as hard as it seems. Its a lesson thats stood me in good stead.

Down And Out in Varkala

From Munnar we went to Cochin where we spent a day. We wanted to do the famous backwater trip. So we headed to Allepey and checked out the ferry’s at the waterfront. A day-long trip to Quillon cost Rs 250. It was a nice looking ferry. We paid up and put our backpacks in the deck below. The ferry started at 10 am and slowly wound its way south through the backwaters. I had seen and heard so much about the backwaters that what I saw left me disappointed. The ferry was full of foreigners. There was a girl sitting next to us. She started chatting to us. She was also from Canada, but an Anglophone. Valerie had worked for 7 years in an advertising agency and was so sick of it that she finally worked up the nerve to embark on a 9 month ‘around the world’ trip. This was the second leg after Europe. She was making copious notes of all that she saw on the way. This included quotes about India from yours truly. We passed through quaint villages on the way. We stopped at one for lunch. The hotel was located in a hut and the fare was typically keralite. It was amusing seeing the foreigners trying to scoop rice and curry from a banana leaf with their hands. There was a burly German who had the buttons of his shirt undone. I guess it was the heat. A couple of villagers were staring at him. I overheard one remark to the other “He looks like a typical village rowdy.” I couldn’t suppress a smile when I heard this.
After lunch we started again. The bunch on board was an assorted bunch of people. There was a bunch of German tourists who looked rich. Then there was a New Zealander who had been traveling the world for the past 7 years. Currently he was with his Brazilian girlfriend who was wearing a t-shirt that proclaimed ‘babe’ in front. Then there was a bunch of Swedish girls. More on them later.
We passed mata amritananda’s ashram. She is more famous as the hugging mata. She hugs whoever she can lay her hands on, or whoever’s in front of her. Three or four foreigners got off at the ashram. Valerie was headed to the beach town of Varkala and invited us to come along. We agreed.
The ferry languidly wound its way in the afternoon heat. Beers were served. Little boys from the fishing villages we went past ran alongside the ferry and begged the foreigners for pens. The Swedish girls were sitting on the prow of the boat. One of them actually threw a pen into the water. One little boy jumped from the bank into the river and swam to where the pen hit the water. I found what the Swede did offensive (not to mention racist). Valerie nodded her head in disapproval. The five Swedish girls were sitting together. They were sitting in two pairs with their arms around each others shoulders. I noticed a strange tattoo on the first ones bicep. It was a clenched fist, as if raised in defiance. A feminist version of the ‘Black Power’ fist. Valerie later told me that it was probably some sort of lesbian symbol. Evidently others on the boat had realized this and were stealing furtive glances at the girls. They didn’t care.
We reached Quillon in the evening. We headed straight to the bus stand and got into a Varkala bound bus. Sitting in the seat next to us was who else…but another drunk. He kept staring at Valerie and finally mustered up the nerve to chat. “Beautiful cultures” he said. There was a temple procession passing outside complete with caparisoned elephants and banging mridangams. Valerie just nodded.
When we got to Varkala it was night. The three of us booked into a cottage on the main cliff that overlooks Varkala beach. Varkala is tourist heaven. It has all the infrastructure to cater to every type of tourist: cottages, lodges, restaurants that serve continental food, memento shops, mini theatres and dealers who sold ganja and charas.
The next morning Valerie, Josie and I headed down to the beach for a bit of surf pounding. It was fun swimming in the sea and getting pounded by the waves. Deeper inside where the sea was calmer you could float gently and reflect on life.