February 2019
My dearest F and Fs
We are nearly at the end of our 4-week tour of Southern India and you’d be forgiven for thinking I’d forgotten all about the promised blog. Well, promised to the hardened few: the rest of you know the score about deleting, but then you won’t even have got this far.
I hadn’t forgotten. You’ve all been on my mind constantly (honest Injun) but it’s been non-stop travelling till now, and exhausting. Any spare time I had was spent catching up on my journal and sleeping.
But here I am at last, and I shall try to make this as brief and interesting as possible. You will feel as we did when being guided around the Palace at Kochi: you won’t want to hang around for too long in the heat – you’ll want just enough information to get the bare gist then move on.
We arrived in Chennai in the early hours of the morning on February 2nd and were met by Hemel, our old friend and guide from our last visit 12 years ago .
We soon realised that Chennai had little to offer and we could have missed it out completely, especially when we arrived at the station (notorious, apparently, for being the smelliest station in India)
in the early hours of the morning. 48 hours later we embarked on a 7 hour train journey of which the only notable event was the numerous cups of free coffee
and two meals.
Our destination was Mysore, silk capital of India, and our hotel like something out of a Bollywood movie.
In fact, Bollywood was probably the only reason it looked so palatial and pristine (on the outside) having been used as a location. Sadly the rooms left a lot to be desired (like hot water to the sink. It would seem the geezer wasn’t set up for such a luxury).
Mysore Palace was impressive
Especially the audience chamber
And the way many of the portraits’ eyes followed you around. Even the direction in which the subjects were standing changed when viewed from different locations. How do they do that?
The highlight of Mysore though has to be (yes, alright, buying silk! but…) the amazing flower and veg market where we could have spent much longer than the couple of hours that we had.
The petals cost 50p a kilo!
Our next stop, high in the hills:
The temperature dropped by about 10°, but we were prepared for this. It didn’t actually get as cold as we had expected. Getting there was somewhat hairy; we had a fabulous driver by the name of Nassa who was with us for a couple of weeks, and who turned out to be worth his weight in gold. But even he wasn’t averse to overtaking on blind corners, just like everyone else, two or sometimes three abreast with a tuc tuc, a motorcyclist and a few pedestrians thrown in for good measure. Imagine, if you will, a crowded pavement on a New York street, the like of which they show in the movies from an aerial view, where the people are ten wide yet bustle along, minding their own business, weaving in and out of the gaps, rarely making physical contact with their fellow pedestrians. Well, that is just how they drive here.
The term ‘they drive on the left’ can only be applied loosely.
We liked Ooty and the hotel was great – old colonial buildings carefully restored and wonderfully clean and comfortable.
We even had open fireplaces in our rooms. (We had ours lit one night, but the chap didn’t make a very good job of it and, after the initial flare up, it went out. It was nice for ten minutes!)
Shaun and I stumbled across a couple of guys tuning the piano and they took out some of the keys to show us how they had been signed by the piano tuners back in the 40s.
(There was an earlier one but it was too faint to be visible on a photo).
We did a scenic train ride to Coonoor which wasn’t terribly scenic! (Mainly because there was sheer rock on one side of the train and you couldn’t see out of the dirty windows on the other!) but we spent the journey chatting to some great backpackers which made it all worth while.
Our drive from Ooty to the next destination was a gruelling 9 hours, and we went from a pleasant 20° to a sizzling 32°. Nassa seemed to grow horns in the last hour and sped us down narrow, crowded streets overtaking everything in our path. We think he’d had enough too!
We were all very relieved to arrive at Coconut Lagoon where we had a whole day and a half of relaxation in beautiful cabins set in tranquil gardens
crisscrossed with little canals that carried floating water hyacinths, and a little old lady serving tea and coffee off a canoe.
We also availed ourselves of the in-house Ayurvedic massages – 90 minutes of head massage, neck, shoulders and back massage, four-handed full body massage, steam bath and scrub followed by spiced coffee! All this for around £45.
Back on the road. Kochi was next where we experienced Kathakali – a form of mime to music or percussion beats, delivered by two men. They started the show by applying their make-up sitting on the stage for the audience to watch
Then one of them did a narrated explanation of some of the gestures and mimes.
It was fascinating. Even the guys enjoyed it.
Kochi had many interesting things to offer including the oldest Jewish synagogue (and the last surviving member visible in the dark shade through a window of one of the buildings) and the Chinese fishing nets
where the boys had to have a go of course!
Not forgetting the laundry:
Now, some of you Facebook followers may have been deluded into believing that I was doing the washing and ironing, but quite honestly, my fingers weren’t strong enough to separate the twisted fibres of the washing line to grip the items, which is what they do instead of using pegs.
I could barely lift the iron either which was filled with burning coconut shells.
We had 2 nights and a day on a house boat in the Kerala back waters after Kochi
It was calm and relaxing after the chaos and noise of the cities, but sadly I got caught by a migraine on that day and wasn’t able to enjoy, to the full, life on the river –
Diving for clams,
bathing (as in having a bath, not swimming,)
Rowing to school
We had to provide our own alcohol for the boat and that was not easy to come by – you can’t just walk into a supermarket and buy what you want – you have to queue up at one of these for ages:
Then we headed for the mountains again, though these mountains were not so high as Ooty and had temperatures still in the 30s. It could all have been a bit disappointing (and was to start with) but the stay was saved by a four hour trek through the forest
interspersed with an hour and a half bamboo raft ride where the heat (especially in our stupidly-required life jackets) was soon eclipsed by the beauty and tranquillity of the location.
On the way we managed to spot a huge owl (courtesy of Shaun)
and a rare mouse deer (courtesy of yours truly)
and on the way back were privileged to stumble upon 4 wild elephants.
We had three nights in that place (Periyar) which was rife with macaques. This little chappie stole my heart with his ‘poor me’ act. It was all I could do not to scoop him up and give him a comforting cuddle
He reminded me of Digit; the more you said ‘ahh, are you OK?’ in a concerned voice, the sadder and more ‘poor me’ he became.
At the next place, Kovalam Beach, I was desperate to swim in the beautiful aquamarine sea, having discovered a new passion for swimming in the hotel pools, but sadly the ever present litter, both in and out of the water, put me right off.
There are movements to curb the filth and the litter that personifies India in the guise of informative posters and bill boards. In Ooty there were guards at the perimeter of the area checking vehicles for plastic bags and fining anyone carrying one (poor Nassa, whose mini bus was pristine and incredibly well cared for, got stung for a carrier bag in his luggage) yet, aforementioned guards stand around all day ignoring the litter piling up at their feet instead of picking it up.
Luckily, we were leaving for the Andaman Islands almost immediately where were treated to a paradise of beautifully appointed huts nestling in the trees, each one out of sight of its neighbour, with no noise, no chaos, no litter and the most stunning beach and sea I’ve ever seen
The water was so clear you could almost drink it and there were barely a dozen people even at peak time. One morning I had the ocean to myself! The most perfect infinity pool! I was vaguely concerned about salt water crocodiles…
but we were assured by staff that one solitary crocodile had, unfortunately, eaten someone about 8 years ago but never been since. Perhaps he got Delhi Belly and decided it wasn’t worth hanging around.
We have eaten extremely well,
drunk perhaps a little less than some of us are used to
and seen more amazing things than I have time or space to show you.
I apologise that some of the photos are a bit fuzzy – we reduced the quality for the original blog to be sent by email and I wasn’t able to source them all to replace them. At least it gives you a flavour and tells a better story than me rabbiting on for page after page.
And so I leave you. Till the next time!
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