Mountain air

At this point I have collected three bags of traditional Keralan dried snacks, three hand-dyed silk scarves, five holiday cards, a bag of jackfruit seeds, a cloth-bound journal, a sandalwood mala, a lungi and an assortment of papers, pamphlets and small books for my family. These little treasures filled up the entire extra bag I had bought and although this all fit into Amara’s big, mostly empty backpack, I really wanted to send the stuff home. I had been trying since Bengalaru, but thought Mumbai might be easier. Then Kushboo told us about the great shopping in Rajasthan, so we thought we would buy some more gifts then send the whole package home. Well, as you know not much shopping happened, but we had a bit of time in Agra at the train station. I trudged through the one hundred and twelve degrees, drenched in sweat, to the post office to buy a box and send it out, but all I got was an offer to get in a stranger’s car (mom told me not to do that) so it went back in Amara’s luggage.

We boarded the tiny train to Shimla with two tiny cups of tea. We spilled the hot hot stuff on our clothing, the ground, numerous seats and a table where we finally set them as we clumsily dragged our bags and tired bodies around. In the end we still had a few sips of the steaming, heavily sweetened, mostly full-fat milk though, and it renewed our energy. We were dirty, if not delirious, but happy as we settled into our seats across from three foreign boys, one each from France, Germany and South Africa, everyone nicely fitting into our idea of their homeland stereotypes with both accent and demeanor. We all swapped stories, the boys of days since their chance encounter, weeks as volunteers and months travelling, ours being dozens of local characters, hundreds of degrees and thousands of miles. The train seemed to take an eternity; our griminess increasing with every hour, until we finally arrived at the tiptop of a big green mountain. We said goodbye to our new friends and hiked up an incredibly steep hill to our hotel, with one quick, unsuccessful stop at the post office. This brought us to vow to send off the damn package while we were in Shimla – we had a few days until we needed to head down the hill to Satoli, a small village Rajeev had arranged for us to visit. We took a few hours longer nap than expected, then headed into town. Bag of stuff in hand.

It was a pleasant half hour stroll into town, most of the road without any cars but many other walkers on their way to hotels, shops, jobs and schools. We arrived at the main post office and announced we wanted to mail this big ol bag to ‘Merica. The postman said no. Huh? You need to package it. Well, yes, clearly. May I buy a box? No. Where can I buy a box? The tailor. The tailor? Yes, then get it wrapped in cloth. Wrapped in cloth? Ok, ok, joke’s on the white girl. Really, may I mail this? No. End of conversation. We stopped for a drink before we set off to…the tailor. We also found a bookstore on the way where we bought a box for three quarters of a dollar. We meandered through the alleyways of electronics, fruits and vegetables, bottles and pots, toiletries, medicine and of course cloth. We must have asked half a dozen shops if they sewed parcels (we realized no other word was appropriate for the stuff, although it all sounded strange to us) before we found a man behind a sewing machine willing to make a mailing outfit for our box. But he didn’t have any cloth. So we started asking for parcel cloth instead. We found new toothbrushes, small towels (ask us what they are for some time) and a number of other things we had not had time to buy in the past few weeks but not until after sunset did we find cloth. Now to find a tailor again. We had gotten quite lost in the maze of the market, but finally, at the top of the hill we found a man willing to sew up our box. And sew it up he did – it took nearly an hour, measuring and remeasuring, checking every seam and making each corner was even. The sun sank lower and lower and we got anxious, like I really don’t think it matters what the box dress looks like, good sir. We were wrong…then next day we came back to the post office and waited in line for a half hour before an old lady pushed us to the front (ladies line!) and we handed over the box. The postman measured, checked and inspected every seam and corner then handed it back. I almost wouldn’t take it, but he said we just needed to write an address with a name (not just ‘the family’). We handed it back and he took it! Who knows if it will ever arrive in the USA, but at least we don’t have to carry it around any more. With that we were free to roam, we went up to a monkey temple and offered the monkey god a juice box, we went to the tailor again with fifteen meters of fabric and got measured for three long flowered dresses. We ate ice cream and trout from the river, we walked up and down the hills and mountains, sometimes with a stick in hand to keep the monkeys away from us, sometimes with a flashlight in hand to keep us away from the potholes. It is a lovely town.


Somewhere along the way we got word that Satoli was no longer an option. The foreign boys on the train had mentioned it would be the Dalai Lama’s birthday the next week and we both knew immediately we would reroute our trip to the north. You don’t end up a short ten-hour bus ride away from the Dalai Lama’s birthday party, in his hometown, in the Himalayas, every day.

Desert fever

The sea has never gone inside the mosque

After a few more tasty meals and lively conversations at Janani’s house, I headed to the airport. As I walked up to the doors I was overwhelmed with excitement for the clean, quiet familiarity of an airport, this one especially so as it looked shiny and new. I settled in to one of a thousand indistinguishable seats with a lemon iced tea (after the barista mentioned the restaurant’s plugs didn’t work as he handed me the passport, wallet and plane ticket that I had forgotten at the counter) and suddenly burst out laughing at the enjoyment I had found in the Bengalaru domestic terminal. I have never in my life (I am so sure I will even keep that never in the sentence) thought of an airport as feeling familiar, quiet or clean in any way before now. I have actively thought of airports as the antithesis of all of those things, in fact. But my mind has changed. I felt comfortable and calm and un-overwhelmed in public for the first time in a while. I felt markedly less so in Mumbai when I waited for a ride to Nimesh’s house upon arrival or when I waited to pick up Amara late that night. But the stars aligned somehow to make that moment in the Bengalaru airport just what I needed, which was reassuring seeing has how it was the third plane ticket I had purchased for this leg of my trip.

Tea time!

The remains of a taxi driver strike were lingering around Mumbai when I arrived, making a bit of a disaster out of my transportation situation. I first called a private cab and after a long hot hour I gave up and called Shailja, Nimesh’s mom, to help me decide what kind of ride to get. I was hounded by touts, but when I tried to get a rickshaw they would just drive away and auto drivers quoted me three and four times the normal price – after negotiations.  Luckily Shailja’s driver was headed back into town though, so after another hour or so he came and got me. In the meantime, I struck up conversations with the touts as they were beginning to think I was just going to stay there and I knew had settled my business now that I had a ride secured. They sometimes wandered away once they realized I wasn’t on the market for a journey, but sometimes they just made fun of me for standing there for so long, and although standing there wasn’t so funny, a few almost got me to smile.

We totally fit in around here...

Upon arrival, Shailja knew exactly what I needed: a delicious snack of classic Mumbai fare, a run down of classic Mumbai sights and a nap. Her driver was ready to take me to pick up Amara at one AM and I tried really hard to shake off my post-nap bad mood in time to see her walk out the airport doors. I had been imagining the moment for a while, and although she looked a little differently than I remembered (since when did she get curly hair anyways?) it was as surreal as meeting my baby sister at two AM in Mumbai should be. Amazing. Not only did I make here, which is pretty crazy, but so did she. New adventure, commence!

Well, the new adventure commenced with sleeping. When we woke up, Shailja told the driver where we wanted to go in the city (a list of the top tourist sights) and we were off. It was slow going winding through the streets of Mumbai and somewhere along the way it started pouring. After that, the driver wouldn’t let us out of the car until we called Shailja and had her translate that we needed some lunch. In the seven or so hours we drove, we managed to see the Gate of India (where we were swarmed for pictures) and a lot of the city from the inside of the car where it was cool and dry. It was like an old person’s tour, which I rather liked, but wasn’t the exactly the Indian adventure I had been touting to Amara. That part started later in the evening, when a couple of Nimesh’s friends took us out on the town where we had Mexican food and Coronas, spotted Bollywood actors (actually, one of them is a Bollywood actor) and despite out grubby, hippie, bumish travel clothes, felt like classy Mumbites (I made that word up) in the big city.

Lotus ladies

The next day we tried to sight see again, this time spending the first half of the day getting plane, train and bus tickets so we could ensure the continuation of our journey. It was hot and expensive and frustrating, and the office we were in had a 5 foot ceiling (yes, really), so we tried to take frequent juice and tea breaks. Once we finally had a way out of Mumbai for Sunday and out of India for the 12th of July, we set off shopping. As we realized the night before, people in Mumbai dress up quite a bit, so we needed to get something nice for the evening. Kushboo, my friend Sonny’s girlfriend, would be taking us out and we wanted to look a little less like road warriors….we hopped on a local bus (actually, I shoved Amara on the bus, past old ladies and young men alike, as it drove off from the bus stand), then a local train (in the ladies car, thank god), and finally a taxi to Bandra, a shopping district where the streets were lined with stalls selling sandals and bangles and cheap cotton goods. I will warn you, neither of us likes to shop, but we tend to do better when we have specific goals. Three hours later we were running out of time as we wandered deeper and deeper into underground alleys of the most random assortment of Western-style clothing I could have ever imagined. Each rack started with fairly new stuff, usually branded perhaps from local factories, and as you moved to the right, the clothing got laughably old. In one of those laughably old sections, I found two rather odd mid-eighties dresses that I fell in love with and purchased immediately for four hundred rupees (eight dollars). A few stalls later Amara found two dresses on the left side of the rack (her style is much more modern) and a pair of shorts, just what she needed, and we were off for accessories. Rapid-fire sandal and bangle purchases and we were off to meet Kushboo and Bjorn, my German friend from St Gallen.

Amara trying to shop in a mini-store

The club we went to had massive statues of goddesses and four story-high ceilings, it was gorgeous. Not the intimate Los Angeles-style place we had been the night before, but a whole different vibe, which was perfect for our short trip. We stayed out too late to go back to Shailja’s so we slept at Kushboo’s beautiful downtown flat and got up as early as we could to grab Bjorn, run up to Shailja’s for our stuff, and head out to see the sights we had missed the past few days.

I would like to add that when we say run, we mean take a taxi with no air conditioning in bumper-to-bumper traffic for two in a half hours, but we made it to all of our stops.

Both the temple and the mosque were amazing, and I had a fun time as tour guide for Bjorn and Amara, neither of who had been to a Hindu temple before. We bought gifts for Lakshmi, the goddess of wealth, and covered our hair to go into the mosque. Mumbai was really starting to grow on us, and we had one last evening to enjoy it before heading up to the desert. Kushboo took us to an open-air hookah place and we called it an early night to catch our flight (oo so fancy) to Jaipur.

Yep, its a desert.

I had debated long and hard about Jaipur. It dropped off the itinerary with all my conversations with Westerners, only to be added back in after talking to Indians. The land of Kings must be seen, we finally decided, and we would brave the heat to do so. Stepping off the plane we exclaimed, it’s not even that hot! And after dropping our bags at the cute little Pearl Palace Hotel, we scurried off to a nighttime circus like place to see a bit of ‘traditional’ Rajasthan culture. About fifty paces in, we realized it was that hot. It was about nine at night, dark as anything, but we could barely move. We found out later it was a hundred and seven. We dragged ourselves to the camel, pet him, and sat. We slowly, slowly got to the bowl-balanced dancy lady and then sat. Same for the palm reader, the swings, the magician, the ice cream seller, the water seller, the tight ropewalker, the elephant, the water seller, the huge white cows and the strange plastic jungle. Finally we made it to a deserted stage, where I forced Amara to do a rain dance with me before we collapsed into a rickshaw. The driver, of course, got lost five hundred times (ok, that’s an exaggeration, but literally fifty times he asked for directions) before we just got out and called the hotel to pick us up. By that time we were feeling woozy and could barely manage a shower before passing out.

More tea please.

In the morning we realized that it wasn’t just the heat wiping us out, but we were both quite ill. I had a fever over a hundred and couldn’t really get up. Thank all of the gods and the not gods and the Lonely Planet and everything else we can thank that the hotel had room service, and they brought us tea after tea after tea while we tried to recover enough to get on the train at five the next morning. We had the Taj Mahal to see….

I was really worried I wouldn’t be able to make the journey, and I told Amara if we could do this, I think we could do anything. The plan was to leave Jaipur at 5:15am and arrive in Agra at 11am in time for the heat of the day (47C) and a quick tour to the Taj. At 4pm we would leave for Delhi, arriving at 8 to change stations. Leaving at 9:45 to Kalka, arriving at 5am to catch the 5:30 train to Shimla where we had a nice hotel reserved. It was by far the most aggressive schedule yet and was intended to see the sights as quickly as possible, to get out of the heat without missing the main stuff. Some of our train tickets were reserved, some waitlisted, and around 8am I realized in the fog of the fever I forgot to even buy one of them (which we solved with a travel agent in Agra). So, as I said, now with the heat, the disease and the schedule, if we can do this we can do anything.

There were camels & elephants on the streets too!

Somehow my fever broke in the night and we got on the train. Amara started to deteriorate at that time, so we rented an AC taxi to take us around Agra. It seems you have to actually walk into the Taj Mahal and there is (apparently) only one single spot outside of the gates where you can see it at all. It happened to be located directly over a river of open sewage, but hey, we saw the Taj...and if you look really hard you can see it too in that pic. Hehe. Luckily Amara could sleep on the top berth once we got on the train, and only had to wake up long enough to change trains in Delhi – no small feat. Again winding through the exhaust filled streets I bought her a string of Jasmine to freshen the air and we tried to relax as the clock ticked closer and closer to our departure time and the wheels sat still. The only time we seemed to move was long enough for a pair of boys on a motorcycle to reach in and grab at us, which made us scream but the driver didn’t seem to notice at all. We ran through the Delhi station, searching for our platform then our train then our car then our seat. Amara curled into the top berth of the sleeper, clutching the Jasmine and a bottle of water. It was a long, hot night with frequent stops where the air stagnated and I would check to make sure Amara with still there, and breathing.

Look reeeeally hard to the left of that forked branch

Around two AM we reached some place high enough that the air cooled and I slept for a few hours. Stepping off of that train in Kalka to brush our teeth and wash our face so we could be seen in our first class car to Shimla we knew we could make it. Amara was feeling a little better after a night’s (and almost the whole day’s) rest (how she slept in that heat I will never know – I suppose that’s how sick she was) and we were both the happiest little things just to be in fresh, cool air. A few hours left, but I think we made it. The mountains! Home! Air! Breathing! We haven't gotten to eating yet either, but hopefully soon...

Oh my. Ooooh my.

Monkeys and scooters and other new things

I discovered captions!

I eventually got tired of sitting in the door and wandered through the cars til I found an unoccupied spot on a bench. Every time I approached the conductor with my ticket in hand he waved me away without so much as a word. I was getting frustrated and extremely curious about what the deal was with this guy, my ticket, this train, the whole railways system, etc. Questions running through my head were to the effect of ‘how can a country this huge and this modern with the kind of global business and production and people it has be unable to properly give me a seat on a damn train?’ It wasn’t until I was kicked out of my third resting spot that the rightful seat owner explained I did not actually have a ticket. I had purchased the right to enter the train and sit in the unreserved car, which he also informed me was so packed I would be unable to stand. I stood in the doorway for a while again, this time somewhat relieved that I was not being somehow prosecuted and there was not some beautiful, cushy, and most importantly, empty seat waiting for me somewhere on the train. With that I wandered through the cars again, careful to hide from the ticket collector lest he banish me to my rightful place, this time somewhat at ease. Not only did I know understand what had happened, but I noticed dozens of other people in the same position and I decided to sit on the corner of someone’s berth as many of them were. I found a girl about my age and asked if I could rest on her bed. At first she said no, but she eventually gave in and after a few hours even let me put my feet up. I slept on and off, compulsively checking that my now two bags (more on that later) were still there and that the time was still moving. Around daybreak the guy sleeping in the berth above us came down to stand at the door and I went up to finally sleep lying down for a bit. The guy who explained my (un)ticket woke me up at my stop and I began the hunt for a power outlet. My phone had been malfunctioning and in my attempt to fix it the battery died, leaving me unable to call (or find the phone numbers of) Ram’s friends Paulani and Pradeep with whom I would be staying. In the end as uncomfortable as it was, the night wasn't a total failure. I arrived in Bengalaru and I felt much more comfortable with trains. Shit, I'll ride a cargo train next time...

I happily bought myself a cold coffee with ice cream in exchange for power use in the station café. As I stared down at my phone with a trance-like intensity it became clear that this phone would not be functioning any longer without some serious work. I searched my brain for where else I might have stored Ram’s phone number and set to work retrieving it from an old chat message on my computer. I used a pay phone (which spits out a little receipt to hand to the attendant) to call Ram and Paulani, verifying the wild address I had written down, filled with Symphonies, numbered highway pillars and long unpronounceable words, leaving my other check-in calls to once I had repaired my phone and could locate phone numbers.

Apparently too dangerous to stay for the colors

It took more than an hour to arrive, but Paulani and Pradeep had a beautiful apartment and I think one look at me and they knew I needed to ‘freshen up’ before we could really chat. They fed me delicious French toast and sent me off on a nap before we headed out for lunch (McDonalds – I have not been able to eat Indian food today, so we decided it would be western food day) and to the Iskcon temple. It was a huge, modern place on the other side of the city, which allowed me to see both a large part of Bengalaru and the newer incarnations of Hindu temples. I made us Tiffany-style Italian pasta for dinner and we all went to bed early, exhausted by the beautiful but traffic-ridden city.

Then next morning I met Janani, Ram’s friend Hari’s cousin who I went to Pondicherry with on my first day in India. She took me along with a few of her friends and sister to see a new Bollywood film Raavan, based on a classic Hindu myth, the Ramayana. Neither of us understands Hindi, but one of her friends gave us a basic translation and I was so entertained by the lively crowd, choreographed dancing and hunky warrier men I didn’t mind much that the plot was improbable and I had no idea what they were saying.

The celebration included lots of food, ceremony and music.

The night on the train and being without a cell phone had left me a bit behind in my planning, so Janani took me back to her house and her mom cooked us food while we used the internet. I was unsettled, hearing reports of rain to the west (where I had planned to go) and that the Mangalore airport was still damaged from the crash the week before, making canceled flights highly probable. To clear my mind, Janani took me shopping to get a Salwar (a long, dress-like shirt and pajama-like pants) and to a friend’s brother’s engagement party. It was an amazing glimpse into some of the tradition surrounding important life events and we rode around the city on Janani’s scooter, which was a revolutionary glimpse into how to survive in an Indian city. We skirted the insane amount of traffic which had handicapped my journeys just one day before, and as my hair blew in the wind I felt free as a bird. When we returned later that night I knew I needed to reroute my travels, so I called up my family while I bought new plane tickets, canceled hotel reservations and arranged for new bus routes.

In the mornings Janani’s mom made me the most delicious khichdi I have ever had – it was rich and buttery and what every morning should be made of. She packed me a lunch for the bus ride and I brought only my stuff for the night – a much, much better way to travel. Janani dropped me off at the bus stop and I felt a bit like a schoolgirl, but on an adventure with a nice business hotel, a temple on the top of a hill and the famous Mysore Palace on the treasure map.

Immediately following the monkey attack...

I decided to get a driver for the afternoon, since I didn’t have a whole lot of time, and he took me up to the top of Chamundi hill. As I went into the temple, practicing all of the rituals I had picked up along the way, people watched and pointed and smiled and asked for pictures. I obliged, but to get some solice walked around the back to a smaller temple, which I had all to myself. I stopped for a juice box along the way, still whistful about the cold stone temples with the deep smell of insence. I enjoyed the mango juice as I walked back into the crowd until I was suddenly grabbed on both shoulders. I immediately stopped, screaming and grabbing my purse out of instinct, until I realized it was two monkeys. They grabbed at my delicious, cold and refreshing mango juice but I didn’t let their grubby little paws take my thirty cents of joy away. I stood frozen in the spot until a man pulled the monkeys off of my shoulders, only for an even bigger one to pounce on me again a few steps away. By this time the juice was all over me and I could see people taking pictures as I scowled at them and asked for help. Those monkey teeth sure look like things I want to keep away from my flesh.

The Mysore Palace at night

I escaped back to the driver and we went to a giant nandi (my favorite!) and the pilgrams steps and waited for the sun to set, or as long as he would let me, citing danger at dusk. I asked him to drive me through the market and to a large palace converted into a hotel for dinner. I had my first fancy dinner, stuffed potato curry and a yogurt cucumber salad, and feeling like a princess I headed to bed so I could get up early to see the big palace and head back to Bengalaru to catch my flight to Mumbai. I still had a few tasks to accomplish: mail the great number of gifts I had accumulated (now filling a whole nother bag) and to get a new cell phone before the moment was finally upon me – I would meet Amara in just a few hours and I was so excited not just to have a travel companion, but to see my baby sister! And in India…who would have thought.

Tea!

I had mapped out a few places to go while hiding out from the cockroaches in Kanyakamuri, even going so far as to write down my rough schedule – on paper! – with phone numbers for hostels and departure times for transportation between cities. Jay’s dad and brother in law went through the schedule with me, helping to shape it into something more manageable and focused. They dropped me off at the same bus stop they had picked me up from four days earlier, this time parting ways as they drove off for the funeral of a family member and I for the mountains and rivers of the north. The first leg of the trip was uneventful, not even any rain until my feet touched down in Kollam. I set them towards the ferry stand, just across the street, to catch a boat through Kerala’s famous backwaters to the city of Alappuzha. I had heard all sorts of conflicting tales of the ferry running (tourist office), not running (hostel owner via a tourist) and running every other day (Lonely Planet). I inquired about this mysterious boat to the group of tan-shirted men draped around the benches at the ferry stand and learned that all three realities were in fact true for their respective owners. The ferry ran any time there were more than ten passengers lined up to ride it. And as big as I may be, I am but one. I waited for a couple hours, gazing at the river and the travelers hopping on and off of boats large and small, hoping just one family of four, one couple and perhaps an old man might be desiring a leisurely cruise through the backwaters with me. 

However, none of my imaginary tourists appeared, so instead I caught the seven am commuter boat (at less than one tenth the cost no less) after a night in Alappuzha in a forest-themed hostel with six baby puppies where I almost burnt down my hut with a coil of incense. Eek. Survival was on my side though, and I even had time to wander through the city a bit, see a guy building coffins and buy a few things for my forest excursion: mosquito repellent, a book, allergy medicine, bandaids, bananas and an apple. [In case you were wondering, all of that totaled to $4.] I was off bright and early, counting my blessings as I attempted to wipe the soot off the green wall where the coil had extinguished itself. As excited as I was to be on a boat, and on my way to the mountains of tea, the river lulled me to sleep within a few minutes and I scarcely remember anything until I woke up on the bus in the hills. It was amazing: lush green, raging waterfalls and pineapples growing in the ground. We climbed higher and higher and I tried harder and harder to capture photos this strange land of things I had never seen before. But as the sights grew more awe inspiring, not once failing to improve with each hairpin turn we rounded, I settled in and waited. The journey is most often my favorite part, to the extreme that I almost dread arrivals, with all of their bag-carrying, reorientation and self-propelled movement. This one I enjoyed the bus ride, but with a reserved room in the forest and a renewed energy from my last four days, I was excited to arrive. 

I was not disappointed either – the mountains at the top were covered in the most beautiful of greenery I had yet to see. Tea bushes were carefully shaped into clouds, the little alleys between them filled with brightly-colored leaf plucking women, smooth boulders and tall thin silver oaks all draped in a thin mist. The air, heavy with the scent of fresh tea leaves, eucalyptus and rain drops, seemed to heal my every malady. It was utterly unworldly. You must go there – and do not listen if they say June is not the time. It was calm and cool and the sun shone through the clouds whenever I left cover. 

I spent the day with the mother of a friend (Himani) of a friend (Rajeev) and she showed me the school for children of plantation workers, a tea factory, a plantation owner’s clubhouse, a paper and fabric project employing artisans with mental and physical disabilities, and a great little biryani restaurant. At that point I headed out to the hills in a rickshaw, with a driver who showed me honey bees, elephants, a hydroelectricity dam, how to make tea and an echo valley with no echo left. I ran into a family from my hotel, who I brought along for a bit, and we ended up having dinner and drinks. I spent an evening talking with them, the parents both teachers in Delhi and the son a musician in Mumbai, a great new dimension after the evening before with a German and an American. We had all swapped stories, the girls of fortune tellers, gem markets, five star resorts and taxi rides through the desert, mine of ancient temples, homemade delicacies, dusty buses and cultural exchange. I think we both promised to ourselves to try a bit of the other side, although I knew I would wait for Amara as bazaars are best explored with company and nice hotels with shared pocketbooks.

The thirty eight hours of breathlessness gave way to twenty nine hours of motion. Another early morning in a rickshaw, driving to the bus, driving to the train and riding to the city where I should eventually find myself on a plane after a few days. As I arrived in hot hot Kochi, I sat thinking about the cool cool mountains, with the long nights of frogs chirping and rain dropping. I gazed at the humanity and missed the trees a bit – so much I almost missed my train as I had brought myself to the wrong station. I hurried through the city to the correct point of departure and found myself unable to locate my seat. The ticket was in some pretty little language I could not read, and even Ram (who bought me the ticket) wasn’t sure where I was to go. I eventually just hopped on between two cars, hoping to find someone to help. I sat, like Huckleberry Finn, at the open train door and continued to muse about adventures, wanders and rambles, patiently awaiting the ticket collector to point me on my way.

Home away from home

I wandered through a small parade, an all-women police department, a steady stream of uniformed children on their way to school and the usual din of rickshaws, motorbikes and farm animals to the bus stand a kilometer or so outside of town. I had misjudged the distance and the heat, but it was good to stretch my legs after so much time in the car over the past few days. I stopped and bought a banana and a bottle of water for the trip (that I will be careful not to drink until we are close to the destination – I have developed an untested but well-founded fear of having to go to the bathroom while on a bus – I just cannot image what I would do in such a case. What do you do? Think about it….) and sat down for a minute before querying the stationmaster about the bus to Triv. Triv, as in Thiruvananthapuram. The bus left within moments and drove back along the whole path I had just walked...ooh the joys of not knowing where you are.

I called Jay’s father Peethambaran when I changed buses a few hours later, so he knew when to expect me. I was both excited and nervous to stay in an Indian house, not knowing what to expect and being somewhat fatigued from travel, language and food on the road. Jay and I studied together in St Gallen; in three words I suppose i would call him a well-read conversationalist. We had debated many things over beers and incomplete powerpoints, including the attraction (or lack thereof) of travel, the merit (or lack thereof) of religion and our successes (or lack thereof) in entrepreneurship. I looked forward to meeting his family but could not picture what they might be like.  Well, picturing another’s family is something like guessing what a river looks like upstream, so I really didn’t try too hard. But after being away from home for so long, anything resembling a home-cooked meal sounded amazing and you can imagine how I was feeling about a bed that was not rented to strangers and cockroaches on a regular basis.

Jay’s father and brother-in-law Hari picked me up from the bus stand and brought me back to their house, which was located right in the heart of town but was somehow quiet and calm. Jay’s sister (Reshmi) and nephew (Dev) and mom (who everyone calls Amma) greeted me at the door and were all instantly welcoming. We started talking and I realized I would be comfortable here for as long as I needed to rest before my next trip, which was a huge relief. I had planned to leave the next morning but in the back of my head knew I needed a bit more time to recover (go go go can only go go for so long) if Jay’s family would let me. They more than just let me, they encouraged me to stay.  And supplied ample meals of delicious homemade food, friendly visits from cousins and aunts and grandparents (all bearing delicious homemade sweets), trips to the local beaches, palaces, gardens and temples, hours to myself and their internet connection, and long conversations about the important parts of life. They helped me improved my eating-with-hand technique, told me that Jay was quiet a kid (yes, the conversationalist...), a young cousin taught me some letters in Malayalam, aunts showed me hand-painted and hand-embroidered sarees, I watched a video of a granddaugher’s wedding, and heard stories and explanations of all different aspects of South Indian culture and cuisine. I really was able to get a sense for not just how things are, but why they are that way.  It was a totally different experience from watching life passing by while riding through on a bus or looking out the hotel window. And I was reminded that everywhere you go, even in a country so different on the street level once you step inside the house you are at home. Many unspoken traditions and formalities that we have in my family (and in most families I know) are explicitly prescribed, which makes everything seem to make so much more sense. Here family are neighbors, at home my neighbors are family. We all eat our meals together and drink tea and coffee day and night. Kids are naturally prone to be either incredibly dedicated to school or incredibly dedicated to playing. We hope to marry before we get old and to find a job that pays more than the last. Parents live for the children and children try to advance the family. In all of this I began to realize what a traditional household I had been brought up in – sure my parents are truly freethinking and would probably be shocked that I just called them traditional – but the values are the same even if they have never been spoken aloud. There is perhaps less tenacity and faith in my world, perhaps more environment and individual, and I'm sure a thousand other differences, but they just didn't seem to matter that much. Actually, I can't even think of any...

The end of the earth (part 2)

I hadn’t thought about it during the planning phase. To be totally honest, I hadn’t thought about much during (what you could hardly call) my planning phase. I had some half-baked ideas of being in roughly delineated concepts of ‘the north’ or ‘the south’ and going to Sri Lanka. That was about it. I also have a friend named Ram who is from this south and, unbeknownst to me until this time, a master travel planner. Being native to the area, he also knew much better than I how difficult it would be on my own without an itinerary (and as you know, a driver). In prodding me to make decisions, buy plane tickets and generally get my butt in gear, he created a spreadsheet of cities to visit in Tamil Nadu, how to get there and what to see upon arrival - he literally arranged everything you have read about so far. What caught my eye immediately in this brilliant little xls was the end of India. Of course, the end of India! Why hadn’t I thought of that? The end of South America was my very favorite place during my last odyssey, and it makes sense to see the end of another great piece of land. So I have made it a little over half way to the bottom with my trusty driver, staying at Circuit Houses in Madurai and Courtallam. These are where government employees stay when visiting on official business and not only are they comfortable, quiet and safe, but they cost about between one and four dollars a night. Yes. One dollar. How is that possible? I will never know. Talk about consumer surplus…I enjoyed each of them one hundred percent of that dollar and all the way up to probably ten or twenty dollars.  Every afternoon from one to four Subramaniam, my driver (named after one of Siva’s sons), would stop by a hotel (aka restaurant) and get a packed lunch for me. I would go back to my little circuit house to attempt to eat what I always declared was enough for 4 (I even asked for a ladies version, he said in Tamil Nadu this is how the women eat and put his arms out where a big belly would be). I would try feebly to avoid and always give in to a nap, and eventually wake up to do some planning for later in the trip. There was no Internet except 2G on my phone (thank the heavens for it, I can only be so disconnected…) and that has made this a very analogue experience. Something about all of these ancient places and activities is also sort of hyperanalogue; it is probably good for my all too digitally focused brain. 

If you plucked out each truck, car, rickshaw and motor bike (yaay no more horns) then turned all of the Internet and computer shops into, hmm I’ll say scribe and printing shops, and tore down all of the billboards…it could probably pass for the 1500’s here. I just made up that year, but look. I mean listen. They speak Tamil, one of the oldest known languages. Everyone wears traditional dress (the men all have collared shirts on though, so in that first sentence, let’s add in ‘strip all of the men of their collared shirts.’ Oo fun). We have already talked about the temples and you can see the signs of worship on most people’s foreheads in white, yellow and red dots, lines and smudges. As you walk, whether in the city or a small village, you can buy vegetables, twine, lumber, cloth, spices, metal cookware - all of the basic things that you need to live. That humans have needed to live since they first started to live. I have literally spent sleepless days (I’m not one for sleepless nights) wondering how the same creatures who play on dozens of little computational devices all day could have ever existed with the simple lifestyles of days past. Well, I seem to have found proof that it is possible. Now I need to figure out how the people I see haggling for small paper packages of turmeric tied up with string are also building the operating system I am typing on at the moment, but one step at a time…

Ram’s spreadsheet (via Subramaniam's driving) has brought me to a number of temples (although, somehow the first is still my favorite, despite others boasting a thousand columns in a single room, monolithic 25 ton nandis or tributes to women with five husbands), palaces and various tanks, caves, and a personal favorite, the Courtrallam waterfalls. The tiny village was not in my book, and there isn’t a spot for me to fill in on that little map over there, but it was a beautiful hill station with long waterfalls filled with bathers and a Circuit House filled with breeze. And cool pastel colored walls. It was my last stop before I made it to the end.

Kanyakumari was not only the end of India, but also the end of Tamil Nadu in my spreadsheet and Subramaniam's point of departure, so the end of my driver. Before he left, he tried to take me to a nice, government run hotel (as in place to stay, not restaurant) but I didn’t want to pay for A/C (it seemed unreasonable to pay $27 for a night after I was so spoiled the past few days). He took me instead to a private hotel and negotiated a tariff of $10 a night (see photo below). It didn’t look great, but had this amazing view, and my first of the end, so I was a little overcome with the spectacle. There it was, outside a dingy hotel room, on a balcony littered with cigarettes, soap and condom boxes: the end of a (sub)continent. And it had two little islands even. The view swept me away and I agreed to stay. I dropped my bag, said goodbye to Subra (even in my head I couldn’t say his whole name, so I nicknamed him that but didn’t tell him, shhh) and ran off to the ferry.

Within two minutes of leaving the hotel and my caretaker /driver a family adopted me. They didn’t speak English but were trying sneak a picture of me with their camera phone, and I offered my camera as an acceptance of their picture taking in return for mine. I really don’t know how else to handle these moments. When it is a group of men I usually look right at them then cover my face so their picture looks stupid, but since it was a family I was a little more ok with it. Apparently, other people noticed and I had to take pictures with three other groups. One of them spoke English and they took me with them to the temple after we visited the little islands. At first they like having me around, later I think they felt somehow responsible for me and therefore refused to leave me by myself, so to relieve them after the tours and a time at the beach eating fresh coconut, I just went back to my hotel. I dragged the plastic chairs outside and waited for the sunset. I was a little scared of the room and also hoped they would light up the islands after dark. I was very, very right on both accounts. The lights were better than I could have imagined – and during the day it was so surreal I could already see a giant blue Siva with half a dozen arms lounging on the rocks where the three oceans met, waving worshipers without coconuts and roses back to the shore. With the green and orange lights, the nighttime scene filled in the colors so my imagination was left to wander about the corners of my room. It was worse than I expected – if it was the US, I would have been pretty terrified for my safety in a room this dirty. Something similar might be found at a truck stop or possibly in a ghetto. Here I had no worries about people bothering me. But I was wrapped up head to toe in my sleeping bag liner (thank god I splurged and bought the x-long one), lungi draped over the bed (sorry dad, it was an emergency) as protection from the unknown and unwashed, sandal in hand as weapon, lights and TV on as deterrent - trying to escape the plethora of cockroaches. As my mom said afterwards, I'm pretty good with bugs, but this was more than I was prepared to handle. But I made it. And nothing even happened! Those nasty cockroaches didn’t carry me (or the Swiss chocolate I brought for my friends) away. And by sleeping inside a piece of silk like a little worm I even avoided mosquito bites. But I will never, ever stray from a plan of Ram’s in Tamil Nadu again. And I think it is time for new caretakers. 

To the south, Mr Driver

All this fascinating cultural adjusting and one of the biggest things for me is a rather mundane one…having a car and driver. I started driving pretty much the day I was legally allowed to (with a few thrilling practice runs in my dad’s old Toyota before that) and my first big purchase in life was a little Nissan 200SX. Perhaps it comes from having daughters or being the eldest in the family, I was indirectly tasked with following in my fathers’ car-loving footsteps. More than that even is an independent streak, which is facilitated by, amongst other things, the ability to drive myself wherever I may need (or want) to go. Still, as much as I love to drive, if you ask any of my non-driving friends, they will tell you I am, well…sensitive…about driving other people around to places I am not already going. Not surprisingly then, I feel rather uncomfortable having someone do just that for me. When the driver dropped me off at the train station, I thought perhaps I would feel a bit more myself on the next leg of my journey. As much as I enjoyed the luxuriousness of not worrying about directions or itineraries or gas or parking or (here specifically) successfully making it from point A to point B, it’s definitely not the kind of travel I am used to. Ram, who organized it all for me, said it wasn’t a big deal, a few of my other friends have drivers all the time at home, and I am paying him, but as I said, I am still adjusting culturally…

I was lucky and had only one lady and her remarkably well-behaved son in my little train berth. I had a bed all for myself and as much as I knew it wouldn’t be, I was still a little surprised that it was absolutely nothing like the Darjeeling Limited. (Side note: just so you know, I may continue to reference this movie for weeks to come. Judge accordingly.) No matter, I was tired and slept pretty well, considering I was moving and wearing cargo pants. In the morning I played tiny imaginary swords with the boy and he told me stories in Tamil out of a little book with an Avatar picture on it. His mom let me know where my stop was and I waved goodbye, careful to leave behind the dozens of swords he had given me.

My feet hit the ground in Tanjovare and I had that familiar ten seconds of ‘wait a minute…what the hell am I doing here?’ but as I had learned over the years, I kept moving towards what I thought might be an exit while I recalculated. I hadn’t fully planned what to do (damn…where’s that driver when you need him?) but I decided just to go to the temple. It would have been a safe bet to flag down a rickshaw and ask for the temple in any city I had been to so far. This time there were no touts and when I asked a driver how much he said forty at the same time I said fifty. Hehe. It was my first rickshaw and my only complaint is that I’m too tall and can’t see anything out the doors. Which is also kind of nice in a way, nobody can see me either.

This was an extra old monolithic temple, with a huuuuuuge nandi in the middle and a thousand of them atop the outer wall. I learned later that the nandi (bull) pulls Siva’s chariot and if you whisper prayers into his ear, he will tell them to Siva. Ummmm I knew I loved cows for a reason…They also pull carts filled with sticks and hay and wire and all sorts of other things to this day (at a remarkably slow pace that makes me say ‘beast of burden’ in my head each time I see one) everywhere I've been except the middle of the cities.

I had a bit of a hard time getting another rickshaw back into town (really missing that driver) but eventually a traffic policeman got me one. He thought I wanted to go to some town 85km away, but I assured him just into town would be fine….I intended to do a little shopping. And I mean a little – I just wanted to buy my dad a madras-print lungi that all the men not wearing slacks or long white dhoti had on. I also realized I hadn’t eaten yet (my appetite is not what it should be although the inevitable illness that everyone warned me of had not yet surfaced, so I’m not complaining) and I saw a First Class A/C Pure Veg Hotel across the street and down some. Problem was the across the street part. I had visions of being squashed between a rickshaw, a motorcycle, a cow and six bikes (being a country girl, sometimes I even struggle with crosswalks) but I waited and breathed and waited and breathed and eventually found a break in the traffic. I felt truly accomplished – and I even cut down the waiting time on the way back. Ahhh sweet success. And the restaurant you ask? Well, I had a great dosa, which is the important part. But there was no A/C, I don’t think it qualified as first class and apparently hotel means…cafeteria…I mean restaurant.

The shopping place recommended in my book didn’t sell lungis (they actually looked a little appalled when I asked, like you don’t want to buy embroidered sofa covers? You want to buy a loincloth?) so I decided to try a little test to fill up some time: taking the local bus rather than another rickshaw to the long distance bus station on the outskirts of town. Sort of working my way up to the real thing. I had heard a lot about them – sometimes people hang out the doorway, men sit on one side and women on the other, they are generally crazy. This seemed relatively tame though. My biggest concern was how to pay (that is the difficult part in every new transit system – ticket on the bus ticket off the bus you never know) and a guy just came to me and asked for money. How convenient. Although I sat next to a lady (following the rules) I have to say, sometimes I feel like a boy here. Indian women are so incredibly womanly, with their long elegant sarees and flowers in their braided hair. I was wearing green khakis and a mens button-up shirt and when combined with the fact that I was alone (I saw very few women alone), am fairly unwashed, taller than many of the men and have short hair…well, my femininity is suffering. I guess that is kind of the point though – I am attempting to minimize attention and I am often shocked that people still stare at me even in this rather plain and dirty state. I am quite pale I suppose. I made it to the bus station anyways, and I wandered a bit until I heard someone yelling ‘Madurai’ and I hopped on. Four hours. No A/C. No seat belts. No doors. Here we go.

Boredom sets in

Haha just joking. I can’t remember how I got on the subject, but it came to me that it is probably near impossible to get bored here. I might get tired of things like car horns, giggling school boys and very-near-curry-flavored breakfasts, but I certainly will not get bored. The level of (both social and economic) activity going on is mindboggling. People watching, always a favorite activity of mine (right up there with food in my travel motivations list) has taken on a whole new form here (and typically from inside some sort of vehicle or sitting on the ground – not a whole lot of quaint Euro-style cafes around). I think the vast number of people combined with a marketplace-oriented infrastructure create a highly-observable outdoor lifestyle.

There is something else though, something like a cultural multiplier (guess who just finished macroeconomics??). Whatever you get when you subtract out the place (natural and manmade) and the people (number, diversity, food, etc) to be left with a sort of mixed bag of sum-is-greater-than-the-parts attributes.  I’d credit these unknowables with the difference between, for example, Canada and the US, Chile and Argentina, or Switzerland and Germany. The latter of each pair has a somehow amplified culture from the former – more intensity that cannot be explained by the greater number of people (in Germany and the US) or different landscape (Argentina). I have my theories on this, but I will see if I can find something to read about it before I misinform you anymore…I think you have to be there to really get a feel for it and I haven’t spent enough time anywhere to exactly know.

But anyhow, I first wanted to come to India and Sri Lanka to see the place, or the tea actually. I grew up drinking tea with my mother and grandmother, and while living in Los Angeles, my sisters Hannah, Amara (when she visited) and I had taken to spending long afternoons in a tea shop. They have some 250 teas from all around the world and my favorite was a Darjeeling. Things started to fall into place after that…the Darjeeling Limited with three brothers on a train (although they are not in the right age order, they are us three girls to a T), the NY Times article about Sri Lanka, moving to Singapore…in parallel I was beginning to take an interest in the people as mentioned in an earlier post and rediscovering the religions I had dappled with via yoga over the years. The final push was the food. While I have always loved Indian food, a small stand in the canteen by my dorm took it to near-burrito status over the past few months. And when I’m not following my eyes, my stomach gets next pick.

Now, somehow, I am sitting in the middle of it all and the cultural part is more interesting than what I originally came for. Actually, I am more the south east of it all, but I would venture to say Tamil Nadu pulls the cultural center slightly in its direction. Vasanth took me on a local’s best-of tour through Chennai on Sunday and a driver arranged by Ram drove me outside the city to a few classic tourist sites. Many of the spots, like Marina beach, that we went to on Sunday were in my Lonely Planet, but not the brand new mall that just opened last week (they were still doing construction, while we were shopping, which was as interesting a sight as the miles of brightly colored cloth in the Saree and traditional clothing section of the department store). Nothing in the book could have facilitated me driving to dinner (I think I will come back some day when I can rent a car and drive around without worrying about Vasanth’s car – it was truly exhilarating). I would not have found a place to buy Indian whiskey (apparently no women have ever been in the bar behind the wine shop and I would be no exception). And I would have been far too shy to go through the Ashtalakshmi temple on my own, but we went through its winding, narrow maze-like corridors, praying to 8 different lady-gods. The walls were all made of stone, with years and years of brightly colored paint layered upon one another, making it look almost tie-dyed. The shrines are set into the walls and the small flames of ghee candles bounce around the otherwise dark boxes, illuminating flowers, silver trays holding colored kumkum powder or offerings and the shiny parts of statues millions of people have touched as they pass by. This is not the distant experience of a church or the silence of an ashram. It is loud – there are hundreds of people around and you can hear the city outside. It is hot – except for occasional curves in the corridors with openings for the wind to blow through. It is totally engrossing – you feel the stones on your bare feet, you smell what might be whole field of jasmine hiding somewhere in the walls, you see all walks of life worshiping as they have for thousands of years. Thousands of years! Unbelievable. Afterwards you sit outside for a few minutes, but I have been spending a lot of minutes to settle back down to the real world.

On Monday I went to a series of outdoor temples carved into huge granite rocks in the 7th century. I really wasn’t sure what to do at first, and I refused initially a man offering to be my tour guide. But he was persistent and I realized I would otherwise just be wandering around, somewhat aimlessly, and probably surrounded by touts, as my driver was not particularly interested in seeing the sights with me.

Turns out I made a fantastic choice, he told me about every little carving, answered my questions about this and that and helped me ward off the sales pitches for stone carvings, postcards and sea shells. He took me into the newer temple too, as I am still a bit nervous to go on my own. I am settling in though, first with friends to learn the ropes, then with a guide, next I will be off on my own before I meet Bjorn, Amara and Sam.

The last stop of the day I considered skipping, my book didn’t say much about it but that it was good for the kids. I went though, skeptical as I began to move through first an art gallery and into a garden. I found what seemed to be an empty house and when I peered in I realized this was one of those living history museums, a la Genesee Country Museum, which was my favorite destination when Grandma would take me out as a child.

The place was empty; free of hordes of school children (no children at all in fact) and all of the employees (who are the actual craftsmen and women) were just hanging out and chatting. It was just perfect for me (I needed some time without talking to strangers) and I went into all of the 16 houses, a few from each of the southern states. More of my questions about dress and eating and religion and environment and history were answered. All at my own pace. Actually, it was also about 100F/38C and in a long skirt and button up shirt I think it was a near religious experience brought on by the vast amount I sweated. Its like living in a fully landscaped, decorated and populated sauna.