We flew down to Kerala on the South West coast of India, on
15th April and took a taxi straight to Fort Cochi. My friend Flick’s
lovely Mum, Jan, has been to this area of India numerous times and proved very
helpful with tips of where to stay and how to get a houseboat to explore the
backwaters. Fort Cochi is a beautiful, quaint little area. It’s one third of
the archipelago that makes up Cochin and is the older, more colonial area. In
quite a contrast to what we’d experienced elsewhere in India, Fort Cochi was
more strongly Christian- Catholicism having been left behind by the Dutch/
Portuguese colonisers.
There were very few tourists around due to the intense heat
of this time of year so the town was nice and quiet for us to wander around.
Kerala is the home of Aruyuveda (natural and herbal) remedies and massages so
the first day was a good time to sample some. I went for a massage which
consisted of having a bottle of oil poured over me and my tummy rubbed a lot.
It was interesting and I believed whole heartedly in the ancient wisdom which
dictates the practice, delivered by a nice old lady who oozed spiritual
insight- I am quite easily sucked in!
During our time in Fort Cochi we frequented a little cafe
called Teapot- recommended by Jan. It was a lovely place to escape the heat and
eat some good food. On our second day I left Jonny behind and got up early to
go to a yoga class. I was so happy that I was doing yoga as it was intended, in
the baking, sweaty Indian heat. The male teacher was ridiculously flexible and
very unforgiving to his sole student (me) who has not done yoga for a few
months now. It hurt pretty bad but was a great, hot experience. On the way back
I shared a rickshaw with a nice lady who offered to show me the temple of her
religion- Jainism. It was very interesting and she explained to me that Jains
believe in keeping their body and thoughts pure. They eat only vegetarian food
that has been laid out in the sun and so enriched with ‘solar power’. They also
believe that your thoughts, as much as your actions, can hurt people and so
work on disciplining themselves to control their minds.
When I got back we started our day of sight-seeing in Cochin.
It turns out that Kerala is known as God’s Own Country, which could be down to
its incredible natural beauty or down to the fact that every faith seems to be
represented amongst its population. As well as my Jain temple, we visited a
Hindu temple, more than one Catholic basilica and a very old Synagogue. We also
visited the house of the former royal family and a fantastic smelling spice
market. We had a great dinner before preparing for our three day houseboat
experience!
With a lot of help from Jan and her friends we secured
ourselves a pretty sweet deal on our own private houseboat with a bedroom,
upper deck and chef. We set off and slowly made our way through the winding
backwaters of Kerala. The landscape was breathtaking with wide expanses of standing
water with lily-pads and flowers as far as the eye could see and bright green
rice paddies. During the evening we watched the sun go down and the kingfishers
dive for their supper. During the days we took residence on our upper deck to
watch Keralan everyday life go by. Houses line the, often very narrow, pieces
of land in the backwaters and we saw people washing themselves and their
clothes in the water, children playing and waving at us and even a group of
around 1000 ducks being herded towards a rice paddy to eat the remaining grains
before the next harvest. It is a very beautiful place. The food was delicious
too and we were sad to leave, what now felt like ‘our’ houseboat after the
three days.
We got off the boat and had to stay in Alleppey, which was
not as beautiful, for a couple of days due to the crazy train system here. In
order to get a train, you have to book in advance- fair enough, but when we
went to the station 5 days before we wanted to travel, we were told the next
available train was in June! The only other option, we were told, was to queue
from around 6am the day before we wanted to travel to purchase ‘emergency
tickets’. Being the great guy that he is Jonny went to queue for 4 hours and
secured us two tickets to our next stop- Palolem, Goa.
We had heard good things about the trains in India and were
pleasantly surprised as there are constant offerings of Chai, Biriani, soup,
Pakora and other cheap treats throughout the journey. However, my bed was
folded down from two seats and so was not especially comfortable making it a
sleepless 17 hours! We arrived in Palolem at 5am and were told that we would
not be able to get into our booked room until 8am so we went to sit on the
beach like zombies until then. After some sleep we ventured out...Palolem is a
very popular tourist town and beach but we came at the right time and there
were few tourists around. We spent two days on the beach in Palolem. I had the
obligatory henna tattoo on my hand and then nearly had the same hand bitten off
by an angry stray dog! We headed to the even quieter beach of nearby Patnem and
sat, ate, drank, read and swam for another two full days. Feeling pretty chilled
we took a bus to Benalium, about a 2 hour ride away in all, which is another
beach resort more often frequented by Russian holiday makers. Again, due to it
being low season, we bagged a bargain accommodation-wise and ended with our own
apartment- bedroom, lounge, kitchen and bathroom! We did some more beach
chilling, which we are getting quite good at now, before heading off again to
the capital of Goa, Panjim.
I didn’t know but Goa remained under Portuguese rule right
up until 1961, a full 11 years after India had declared independence from
England. The European and especially Catholic influence is therefore very
strong in Panjim. It is a nice, small place with painted colonial houses and a
slower pace of life than a lot of other places in India. We took a walk around
Panjim and then explored nearby Old Goa which is home to the largest church in
Asia and about ten more very sizeable cathedrals.
Yesterday we caught the 10 hour train up to Mumbai, our
final stop. We got up early today to go on a tour of Dharavi slum where some of
Slum Dog Millionaire was shot. Reality Tours gives you a guided snapshot into
the life of slum dwellers and 80% of their profits go back into the slum
community and they were fantastic! First we drove through the red light
district in which, very sadly, 35% of the prostitutes are children and on to
the largest outdoor laundry area in the world. Our guide used to live in the
slum and was very keen to tell us about and show us the positives about these
areas, which he doesn’t feel have been reflected in films like Slum Dog. There
are 2,000 slums in Mumbai (the definition of which is houses built on
government owned land) and the one we saw was 1.75 Km² and housed 1 million
people. 55% of the population of the city lives in the slums which are hives of
industrial work; Dharavi specifically accounts economically for $665 million!
As we walked through the narrow lanes of the slums we saw people melting down
plastic to be resold, banging the dints out of oil and paint cans to be sold
back to the companies, crushing glass and making pottery and poppadoms. It’s by
no means amateur but a slick industrial operation run like clockwork. Our guide
told us that the slums are very safe as people live so close together- in fact
we saw inside a house which was one room, 125 square foot in which a family of
4-11 people will sleep, wash and cook. It was fascinating, and yes it was dirty
and smelly, but it definitely gave you a different perspective on what we
understand by the word ‘slum’.
Tonight we will have our final curry before heading back to
England tomorrow. It has been an incredible 3 and a bit month trip and I have
experienced so many things and places I would never have dreamed I would see.
In honour of the places we have been Jonny and I have devised awards to give
(separately of course as we’d never agree on them all!!)....drumroll....
Jonny Bex
Favourite Country Malaysian Borneo India
Favourite City/Town Yogyakarta, Java Yogyakarta,
Java
Best Experience Sipadan
Dive (Borneo) Bamboo
Train (Cambodia)
Want to Re-visit Most Indonesia Indonesia
Best Food (General) Thai Thai
Best Meal (Specific) Fresh
Crabs (On Mabul) Hot & Sour
Soup (Siem Reap)
Best Restaurant Ka
Lui, Palawan Mondo,
Phu Qoc
Favourite Moment Taj
Mahal at Sunrise Singing
Qiwallis (Delhi)
Best Accommodation* Hien
Mai, Nha Trang Malam 1001, Yogyakarta
Friendliest People Laos Laos
Favourite Activity Snorkel/Scuba Snorkel
Best Beach Patnem,
Goa Hoi An
Best Massage Country Philippines Thailand
Favourite Sight Amber
Fort, Rajasthan Amber Fort, Rajasthan
*We thought it was only fair to omit the Shangri-La from
the awards!
Thank you for reading! x
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