I Left South India
Thursday, May 10th, 2007… and my blog should too. Time to catch up.
The last 10 days or so have been very, very busy. On the day that I wrote my last post, I flew from South India to Delhi ($85 for a last minute seat on GoAir, another great Indian discount airline). After spending a few days in Delhi, I climbed north toward the Himalayas, stopping at Chandigarh (a green, clean, and unusually orderly Indian city planned by Le Corbusier in the 1950s) and Amritsar (Sikhism’s holiest city). And a few days ago I arrived in McLeod Ganj, home to the Dalai Lama.
But before all of these North India adventures, I also visited the South India towns of Kochi and Munnar. I’m such a failure as a blogger. A million apologies for my lack of regular updates. (How do those daily travel bloggers do it?)
Here are some South India highlights:
The Houseboat Experience
It feels like I was cruising through Kerala’s backwaters ages ago, but I know I said I’d write about it… So, I hired a private houseboat while I was in Kerala. Talk about luxury. The ride has been the one of the major highlights of my trip- expensive by Indian standards (we paid about $150 for two nights and two full days, and -as a point of reference- most days we usually spend about $20 total for our room, food, and transportation) but worth every penny. On both days, Matteo and I (and our 3-man crew!) traveled through large and tiny canals lined with coconut-heavy palm trees, past small towns and villages set amid rice paddies. We saw children bathing in the canals, women washing and cooking, and men fishing or paddling by in canoes. And, occasionally, we would stop to talk with the people, visit something that caught our interest (like an amazing church painted in vivid oranges and blues), or eat incredibly tasty food made by our chef- fish caught that morning, fat Kerala rice cooked in coconut milk, and fresh vegetables seasoned with a million unknown and delicious spices.
I wanted to stay forever, but instead we went on to…
Kochi
Kochi is the main town in central Kerala. Matteo and I stayed at Fort Cochin, which is a quaint little town on a island just off the coast that you can reach by ferry. We didn’t do a lot- mainly wandering around town and visiting some sights, including the oldest synagogue in India. One night, though, we attended a kathakali performance, which is a unique form of theater developed in Kerala. Kathakali performers do not use speech to express their stories. Instead, aided by drummers and a singer, they use dramatic facial expressions and intricate gestures. Their costumes and make-up are also incredible- so much so that audiences come to a pre-performance session to watch them get ready. It was a very fun evening.
Munnar
After Kochi, we went to Thrissur (which you already know about), and after that we went on to Munnar, a hill station where we could escape the heat and humidity of the lowlands.
The best part about Munnar (besides the cool weather) are the views. The town is set amid tea plantations, so the surrounding hills are covered with individual, dark green tea bushes that given the landscape a beautiful patchwork look. One day, we hired a car to drive us through the hills, where we saw lakes and waterfalls and fat cows eating real plants rather than city rubbish and Indians on holiday happily bundled in sweaters and wool beanies.
Ok, check South India off the list. Stay tuned for stories from the north.
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