The Longest Day - Last Post

Sunday/Monday 3/4 March

At first light, someone is thwacking a palm tree in the secret garden beyond my bed head, coconuts falling with dull thumps. On the sea side, the breakers crash up the beach, though the pink dawn sea is calm. A yoga lesson swings slowly into action, a dozen gym-slipped girls squatting on bright mats twirl their arms in slow motion. I will soon be far away, but first, after breakfast, I meet Radish the Massage Man for a final "rejuvenation" session. He's probably too gentle to put me to rights, but a feel virtuous and perhaps a little rejuvenated.

Been there, got the T-shirt

My pre-booked tuk-tuk meets me at 10.15 and we head off for a breezy 2-hour ride south to the airport at Thiruvanandrapurham (normally still called by its earlier name Trivandrum, presumably for reasons of economy). My Spice Jet flight is delayed by two hours, but I still arrive far too soon in Mumbai. With so long to wait, I should have used the time for a trip into town and a decent meal, but end up people-watching outside the International Airport (not allowed in for four hours!), then an interminably long wait inside too, as the BA flight is also delayed until 3.45 am. After three weeks on the road/bus/rail/boat I'll be glad to see home.

End of blog - may be resumed at some time in the future!

Hope you've enjoyed reading it, if you have been.

Richard

abbeygarth@hotmail.com

Varkala

Saturday 2 March

Vale Varkala

Today I finally get to see an elephant. Not just see one, but ride on it. The guidebook mentions the Anathavalam "elephant farm" at Puthenkulam, 15 kms up the road, where some of the elephants used in temple festivals are cared for (I use the term loosely). After a morning dip in the ocean and a shopping expedition, I meet with Katriona for a cucumber juice (an unacquired taste). We abandon our scheme to rent mopeds and head for the ellies by auto-rickshaw instead. Most of the resident pachiderms (this is current guidebookese for elephant) are out on hire to temples, this being a busy festival season. So we find just one young one, chomping his legs and looking doleful. He is quite tightly hobbled with one front and one back leg chained. For riding, there is also an adult who is out of sorts having just taken a family of Russians for a tour of the paddock. Now he has us to carry.

We mount the steps of an elephant-height mounting block and climb aboard, perching ourselves precariously on a blanket on the elephant's back. Riding jumbos (effectively) bareback is not easy, as I remember from a previous experience in Zimbabwe. They lumber along, lurching from side to side; you can't get much of a grip with your knees as they're so fat, and there's nothing to hold on to. Oh for an "elephant and castle" like a nawab or maharaja of old. Our mahout is a mean-spirited young man who leads us along thwacking the elephant with his stick. But when we get to the bottom of the field, we halt. Elephant (I've forgotten his name) refuses to move further despite increasingly shrill orders/threats from mahout. He (eli, not mahout) 

1. flaps his ears (elephant body language for "I'm cross, so watch out!"; 
2. emits deep base rumbling noises like a digeridoo; and 
3. raises his head and bellows. 

This registers a good deal higher up the scale of my riskometer than hanging out of open train doors. It's a long way down to the ground, and a long way back to base. There have been recent stories in the Indian press of elephants running amok. Happily, our steed has a compassionate streak, and is persuaded to return us to the mounting block in one piece. Phew.

Katriona, in good spirits

On the way back, we ask our autorickshawwallah to take us to a somewhere to buy alcohol, hoping it won't offend his principles. Katriona is going on to the Maldives in a few days' time where, apparently, there is a total booze ban. She believes they may search her luggage on entry, but figures that gin or voddie decanted into a drinking water bottle may get through. So we pull up at the bottom of an alley somewhere in Varkala town, and he points us to a long queue of rather sleazy looking men (plus one Englishman) outside the state liquor store, just a shuttered counter in a wall. K joins the queue, the only female, but is then pulled out by someone and shoved to the front. I suppose this is on the basis that state-run enterprises (e.g. buses, as I now know) usually have "ladies only" sections. Within minutes, she comes away brandishing a bottle of pineapple-flavour vodka, much to the chagrin of English woman who is still patiently waiting for her husband to get to the head of the queue. Pineapple-flavoured Vodka, we later discover, goes well with tonic.

I've been told that the ancient Janardhana Swamy Temple in Varkala town opens at 5 pm, so I take another rickshaw ride to see it. This is my final temple this trip, and it surpasses all expectations. It crowns the top of a hillock in the centre of town, approached by a long flight of steps. I must, of course, remove my footwear at the shoe-wallah's rack, and buy a R. 10 firecracker ("make a big bang for God") from the firecracker-wallah, who lets it off with a bang and a puff of white smoke then gives me a mango. There's a Rs. 100 fee for photography collected by a scary woman with a stick. 

The walled temple enclosure covers a sizeable site, with many separate buildings, thousands of oil lamps (unlit) and a tall brass pillar which gleams in the late sun. Non-Hindus are banned from the central "sanctum sanctorum" (as it's called), where even Hindus must remove their shirts and touch their foreheads with sandalwood paste. This is evening prayers time, and though there is no formal ceremony (it may be later at sundown after I leave) a stream of devout and well-dressed worshippers "circumambulate" the site clockwise, making offerings and clasping their hands in prayer at the various mini-shrines. Back outside the temple, at the foot of the hill, the temple tank is a rectangular lake where many people swim, shampoo their hair and wash their clothes on stone steps at the end of the day, like ghats on the Ganges. Back near to south beach is a cremation site where ashes are tossed into the breakers on their final journey.

I cut here, OK?

I shop for a rug (left - salesman not included), then pack my bags before another fishy dinner of fresh-caught baracuda. Tomorrow it's farewell to beautiful Varkala beach, this little enclave of not-really-India in India. 

It is also goodbye to Katriona who has been an engaging good companion for the last few days. 

And at the end of tomorrow, "Good-bye India."

End Product

I restore the equilibrium of my bioenergetics

Friday 1 March

... in other words, I have an Ayurvedic massage (wording borrowed from promo leaflet). But the sea is also pretty restorative. I feel like Jacques Tati's Monsieur Hulot (my fave 50s comedy film) as I look out of my window across the bay and breathe in deeply, wondering what what can possibly befall me today. I swim at 8, when the yoga students are already out in force flexing their biceps, then breakfast at Tuman's Restaurant (with working wi-fi) next to my guesthouse. On the basis of "try anything once", I have resolved to give massage a go. It's high on the must-do list in the Rough Guide (and the smooth ones too), so I decide on a tentative approach by agreeing to a head massage with a hint that neck and shoulders might also benefit if they could throw them in too (ever one to bargain). After all, "To relax mind and body, is good feeling and relaxation get," as the brochure also states. 

My masseur Radish (Radesh?) is all gentleness and charm, and, by stages I seem to be agreeing to more and more items from the salon menu. Perhaps inevitably, we end up with the "full body" treatment. This indeed "is good feeling", but it must be admitted is not for the inhibited or the prudish. I realise something's up when Radish bolts the door from the inside! But by the time (not quite) every part of my body has been rubbed, pressed, squeezed and caressed with scented oils, I am perhaps a little less inhibited and prudish than for my previous 63 yrs. 10 mos. Which has to be a good thing.

[Since writing the above, one of my "followers" (incredibly, they do exist) has been in touch to ask if I was too embarrassed to mention how much I paid for Radish's service (so to speak). Had it cost an arm and a leg? Well it did - two of each, plus a back, a chest, neck, a couple of feet and a pair of buttocks. The sensible answer is Rs. 1000, say £12. My haggling skills must have deserted me.]

My end of the beach. Hill Top is at the top of he steps (right)

After which, I take the rest of the day in the slow lane (the reason for coming here, after all). I meet Katriona to explore the shops further along the Ridge and have a bland "thali" lunch at a place like an African safari lodge minus the animals. Then another swim and more beach time to work up a bit of a tan so Norfolk people know I've been away. On my return, the hotel manager offers me a free dental check-up at 5.45. Is it my ayurvedic smile? I decline - I've had enough probing for one day - but promise to read the "six golden rules to avoid dental caries" leaflet he gives me instead.

This evening, meet up with K again for a meal at the ABBA restaurant, which serves Swedish food (amongst others). I have fish and chips, K has Lasagne. Very Swedish. But at least we can get cocktails and beer. My netbook has been invaded by a colony of tiny ants that keep popping out of its every orifice. I hope they won't make the letters all jubmeld pu.

From A(shram) to B(each) - Amritapur to Varkala

Thursday 28 February

Surreptitious photo of Ashram entrance

I sleep surprisingly well despite my thin mattress on the floor and am not woken by the 4 am rising bell. So it's 5 am by the time I emerge from my little room, shaped like a wedge of Stilton cheese. The committed "ashramites" (ashra mites?) are well stuck in to chanting the thousand names of the Almighty One, but I have a few minutes for contemplation before joining the queue for free tea at 6 (we were warned not to tarry or it would be gone, which it was.) I am reminded yet again of what it feels like to be a stranger in an unfamiliar world. "Where are the cups?" I have to ask. "In the bucket, (stupid - implied)". Later, I'm not sure which queue to join for the free breakfast, so cop out and buy cornflakes and a cheese omelette at the pay cafe instead. The daily schedule lists morning meditation on the beach, near the yoga station, so I make my way down there. I perch myself upon a damp rock to watch the sun rise, only to discover that my white cotton bedwear now has an embarrassing brown-stained backside, stupid. I creep back in and change.

Just "hanging out", 60 mph

After a session in the ashram internet cafe, I purchase replacement second-hand white trousers for Rs. 10, then rendezvous at 11 with Katriona and check out. By now, Her Holiness Amma is already stuck into another busy day of hugs, but we take a bumpy rickshaw ride to the nearest station, 12 kms. away at Kayamkulam. We buy second class tickets, but the train (which has come all the way from Delhi) is an hour late. At least I can lean out of the open train doors unchallenged (they probably bother less about second class passengers falling out!), an exhilarating sensation especially when we cross viaducts and pass within sight of the sea. [Wind-blown hair also illustrates recent haircut & beard trim!]

Varkala has a top notch beach - clean and beautiful with a lane of small shops and hotels running along the top of its striking red cliffs. So it's hardly surprising that it is populated largely by Europeans, mainly (young) Brits and French. Having inspected a number of places to stay, I check in at the "Hill Top Ayurvedic Guest House and Dental Spa" while Katriona finds a funky-painted room in a place next door. Hill Top is just the place to end a 3-week trip. It has steps down to the sea, and my room has a breezy private balcony and a view south along the beach. It'll also be handy if I develop toothache. I can see and hear the surf without even leaving my bed. After a rest, I head down to the cliff steps and dunk myself in the warm breakers. Delicious!

Room with a view

Varkala, unlike elsewhere in Kerala, has a relaxed if covert, attitude to alcohol. The restaurants here serve beer in pottery mugs (you don't have sight of the bottle, they bring two full mugs to the table). There are "mocktails" (alcohol-free cocktails) and the real thing too. Spirits in cocktails (popular) are "coded", as the waiter puts it. Gin is G-juice, Rum is R-juice, Vodka is V-juice and so on. Most of the waiters here are Tibetan and several restaurants have a string of prayer flags flapping from their terraces. It feels familiar.

Amritapuri - I am Hugged by a living Goddess

Wednesday 27 February

I refine/change my plans yet again and this morning cancel a train trip and a flight and book a new flight for Sunday from Trivandrum to Mumbai. Its all so easy online! Matthew runs me down to the ferry quay on his scooter, where I meet up with Katriona and board the Kollum boat. This ferry is aimed at tourists, which is why it costs twenty times as much as Monday's local ferry. In return, there's a fancy souvenir ticket and soft but grubby seats. There's also a clean loo and a covered upper deck (stooping required) for a firm but breezier ride. The ferry is only about a quarter full, so I dodge around from level to level and side to side according to the view.

Coracle Fishers

Which is a re-run of yesterday - palm-fringed river banks or raised canals plus a lock and a lake or two, brightly-painted cottages, people ambling along under umbrellas, fishing and domestic chores, a floating shop, "Chinese" nets (out of action), and boys paddling fishing from coracles. We stop for a quick but tasty veggie lunch served on a paper banana leaf, then on again to Amritapuri where K and I disembark along with half the passengers. We are punted across the river in a canoe, and are soon checking in at the Amritapuri Ashram's International Arrivals desk. Ashram rules: no meat, no loud voices, no photography, no sex, alcohol or smoking, no bright or immodest clothes, practise brahmachrya ("hugging, kissing and holding hands is inappropriate" - wot, no hugging? See below.) There are about 3000 guests staying, about half and half Indian and Western, all ages including children, more female than male. Many wear all or part white, so I don my nightwear trousers (thin white cotton, knee-length, baggy) and think I look the part. Everybody smiles at me. Indeed, everyone smiles - all the time - and so do I.

Ashram from the river

Now I am not an ashrammy sort of person, so have little idea of what to expect, but I think this is not the norm. For a start, the main ashram building is a huge pink tower block. Her Holiness Mata Amritanandamayi is not only India's most famous guru, she is regarded by some as a living saint / goddess. She is a "global phenomenon", raising vast sums for good causes worldwide. She coolly wrote out a cheque for US$22 million, for example, for relief following the tsunami, and her foundation builds homes, schools and free hospitals for the Indian poor. She even runs a free food programme for homeless people in New York. She's Mother Teresa big time. Like MT, Amma leads a simple personal life; unlike MT, Amma's organisation really benefits huge numbers of people in tangible ways. I join Katriona for the introductory video and orientation tour, and later visit the shops, internet cafe and basic restaurants - even more basic food is provided free.

Amma, as she's called, has a unique trademark - she showers divine love by hugging people (despite prohibition, above). Since the 1980s she's hugged an estimated 30 million people, and today she hugs me too!!! After queuing for the best part of two hours, my turn for Amma's "Darshan" finally comes. I follow the rules (on printed sheet): wipe my face first, remove my spectacles, and don't put my arms round her body. One of her acolytes gently eases me into her arms, she says something incomprehensible ("majorga, majorga, majorga") in my ear, then gives me a banana and a beatific smile, and it's all over in about 15 seconds. Some get much longer. Other people apparently report being overcome by an intense feeling of love. I don't, though I do come away smiling. It was worth the wait, just.

It's 11.30 pm. Amma is still hugging her last few devotees of the day (she's been at it since 11 am). Everyone in the hall stands as the band winds up with its final Bhajan. But my eye is caught by a huge brown cockroach advancing across the floor towards me in stages. Is everyone else just very short sighted, or is there also a prohibition on roachicide? I can ignore it no longer, so I step out as if casually and tread hard on the creature causing it to explode with a loud pop. This, too, makes me smile.

Kerala Waterland

Tuesday 26 February

There's a new face at the table this morning, Katriona from Brazil, who has dropped in for breakfast courtesy of Matthew, the owner. Katriona is planning a small boat cruise round the Backwater bye-ways and is looking for someone to share the experience and the cost of hiring a boat. I jump at the chance, and an hour later we are puttering down the town canal in a sleek little motor launch, like an Edwardian gentleman's Thames steam launch but without the steam (there's a gently purring outboard motor on the back end.) 

Heading off. Note feet in foreground

We have signed up for a four hours cruise at Rs. 300 (£3.50) per hour, the going rate. Katriona and I get on like old chums; we share a love of sailing and travel, though there seem to be few countries she has not visited. She is a lady who does things by halves. She is half Russian, half Italian. She goes off travelling for half of every year. When not away, she spends half her time in Brazil (contains nuts) and half in California, and when there, she is half on her 50ft yacht and half in her apartment. And for half of today, we are sharing the delights of a Backwater cruise.

Vinan (?), our skipper and guide, leads us from broad rivers via narrow side cuts to weed-filled dykes. It is peaceful and picturesque. At every bend a new vista opens up, like a series of living dioramas illustrating daily life in watery Kerala. Here's a woman pounding laundry, there a child having his hair washed in river water. An apronned housewife dressed like a Dutch peasant guts fish, throws the offal to a posse of hopping crows. Six men paddle a narrow canoe at speed, and another passes so heavily laden with cans of kerosene that the slightest wash would sink it. A motor launch, similar to ours, has a group of young Indian men aboard, playing loud music on a boom box. They all take out their digital cameras and snap us as we pass. Secondary pupils in neatly pressed uniforms spill out of their riverside school and coyly practise their English on us as we pass. And there are birds - swan-necked cormorants in the trees puffing out their cheeks, ducks coots and divers, heron and egrets walking on stilts in the shallows.

 We make just one stop, at the St. Joseph's Cement Works and Rabbit Farm, where we drink fresh coconut water (Katriona knows all about coconuts, being from Brazil) and there's a loo should we need it. This is a varied enterprise - not just cement, baby rabbits and coconut juice for boatees, but fantail pigeons, parrot nesting boxes and a hand-reared baby eagle too. 

We're back in town mid-afternoon, and (with little need of persuasion) I lure Katriona into a bar. Bars, Kerala-style (if you can find one) are all-male preserves. I sampled one last night. They are dark, dingy and grubby, full of bleary-eyed men downing glasses of spirits. I secure a chilled beer, and K takes a rum and Pepsi, then likes the rum so much she buys a half bottle. This must be wrapped in newspaper to disguise it before she's allowed out on the street. Shades of American prohibition. Over our drinks, we hatch a plot to meet up again tomorrow for the next leg of the journey south.

Temple service at dusk

This evening I tramp around town, winding up at the main temple, a smaller version of Ettumanur. A steady stream of men and women arrive for a ceremony at sundown, clasping the hands to their foreheads in prayer. Lamps are lit and two bands of musicians (jazzy horn and drums) echo each other both outside and in the central inner sanctum. At the end, a bell tolls and a flame is brought out and passed around for the worshipers to hold their hands in the flame and touch their heads. It is a sort of Hindu Benediction. 

I fail to find an acceptable alternative to last night's restaurant, so I return there for fish, not duck. I also fail to buy Sara a dressing gown or any other things on her list. This is an odd tourist town that doesn't cater for tourists. Even the Kashmiri pashmeena purveyors haven't established a toe-hold yet. I suspect that most of the (very many) people who come here base themselves either on the houseboats or fancy waterside holiday complexes with all food and facilities provided. 

By ferry through Kerala Backwaters

Mon 25 February

A long, hot walk into town for an agonisingly slow session on the www (world wide wait). The town is a mix of the ultra modern, the merely scruffy, and the crumbling old Keralan style of buildings with tiled, pointy roofs like Pagodas. Back via another oily temple where I sneak into the sanctuary, but am shooed out as soon as spotted. Keralan Hinduism seems to be of a simple Calvinist persuasion as there are few idols. But many incense sticks and brass lamps, for which they sell "oil offerings" in Mazola bottles.

Everyone I ask has a different opinion on 1) the time and 2) the point of departure of the state-run ferry boat to Allepuzha -  still, by the way, generally known as Alleppey, with the stress on the first syllable. The first problem is in making myself understood at all. Keralans, you see, pronounce "boat" as "bought", so "When is the bought to Alleppey?" (or "Alleppey bought it go when?" to put it in Indian pidgin) indeed doesn't make much sense. This difficulty is exacerbated by a common Keralan mannerism which involves responding with a little shake of the head. It's actually a sort of combined nod, shake, twist and flex that could be developed into a yogic exercise or a cure for RSI. Is it a yes or a no, or maybe just a maybe? It's hard to tell, especially when not accompanied by verbalisation. I must look it up in a Dictionary of Indian Body Language. Eventually I find a rickshaw driver with a steady head who knows his "boats" from his "boughts" and who claims to know for certain that it is 12.30, or thereabouts, (and has enough English to tell me). I agree his fee sans haggle, and we head out of town past the villas of the rich to a track alongside a weed-covered canal. There's no sign of life, just a foraging goat or two and some long-abandoned wreck of an old wooden boat in the far distance. 

Yes, you've guessed: this is the ferry. I am the first passenger to arrive with well over an hour to wait. I head for the front seat (we won't encounter any hairpin bends at breakneck speed) and check the location of the lifejackets just in case. Unlike the Munnar bus (or December's Calcutta tram) there is no "ladies only" sign, or if there once was, it has long since peeled off with most of the rest of the paint. So I go for a wander, shirtless for some air conditioning as it is very hot, 90 degrees F +.

This is a watery world, like the undrained Fens, or the Broads before anyone beyond Norfolk knew of them. The river is thick with quacking ducks - mallard-type, few drakes - and also with mauve-flowered water hyacinth, so thick the duck can waddle across them. It is hard to see how the old ferry will prise its way through. There's a footbridge over a tributary where someone is feeding what turns out to be crushed sea shells to the duck, then herding them towards the main river with the help of a second man punting a narrow black boat. One of them pulls a duck from the quacking melee and stuffs it, along with a bottle of mango juice, into a sack. Curried duck tonight. 

Beyond the raised river bank is a shallow mere with a boat out fishing, and a couple of brightly painted marshmen's cottages are perched along the bank; a woman does her washing in the river, thwack-thwacking her laundry against a stone quayside. I feel as if I've stepped into a Dutch old master landscape painting. 

As 1.30 departure time nears, a few figures appear along the tow path, and a couple of tuk-tuks rattle down and deposit passengers. The skipper takes his place in the wheelhouse on the roof, a hefty diesel grumbles into life, and the ferryboat laboriously executes a turn to head down west. I pay my fare of Rs. 9 to the conductor - that's 10p, not bad for a 3 1/2 hour boat trip. And so we head off for Alleppey, our first scheduled stop at a little staithe conveniently next to a hut labelled Toddy Shop. 

In the toddy shop, ferry waits outside

This is my chance to try the local hooch, so I go ashore and sit at a big table in the gloomy interior while they bring my glass of diluted and cloudy palm spirit. Meanwhile, someone has stripped to his lunghi and dived under the boat to pull a tangle of weed roots off the propeller  Then the engine starts again, I am summoned by the conductor, the engine bell rings (it is controlled from above by a clanging ship's telegraph system) and we head off downstream, gathering more and more passengers at each stop. This is a well-used service linking what are in effect marsh islands, only accessible by boat.

The narrow canal leads onto a broad waterway, and then to a lake which we cross towards the town. This is where we meet more and more "rice barges", the ungainly houseboats with rounded palm-thatch covered roofs which are the mainstay of the local tourist trade. As we approach Alleppey town up a narrowing waterway, a procession of these lumbering craft makes its way out, ready to moor up somewhere along the banks for a night of solitude. At least, that's the sales pitch. Tourism is now big business here, so let's hope Kerala has not pressed the self-destruct button.

Basic en-suite facilities guaranteed

Failing to find my first choice of guesthouse (it has moved) I wind up at the Venice Castle Homestay. In most ways it's much the best place I have stayed - a beautiful and spacious marble-floored house set in an exotic garden, not unlike our one-time home in Dar es Salaam. The bed feels luxuriantly soft and comfortable after two weeks on thin, hard mattresses made for Indian ascetics. The Venice name is not entirely fanciful, as I hope the photo shows.

Sign of the day