India: Ooty to Mahabalipuram

Continuing our ascent we reached Ooty (that's short for Ootacamund which is short for Udhagamandalam). Ooty was one of the hill stations that the British retreated to, when the lowlands got too hot for them. Getting into the mood of things we started splurging immediately and checked into Kings Cliff Hotel way up one of the hill sides. Once I saw it had an actual bona-fide shower cubicle I couldn't walk away. Of course it also had a fireplace in the room and was about three feet away from a great restaurant so we were pretty happy (except for when it was really cold and we tried to actually use the fireplace and we were completely smoked out so that we had to open the windows and let the cold back in (but that was just a blip, honestly)).

We did a government run tour around the near by lake and hills etc. Not only was it cheap but it was also very cheap. Attractions included driving around various hotels for an hour picking up people who weren't ready yet, visiting pungent lake Watapu (not its real name, but terribly descriptive), and trawling around some hills covered in tea and trees and the occasional botanic garden. The last bit was actually really fun, as tea plantations (and hills) are naturally very scenic, and watching all the middle-class Indians on the tour take photos pretending to be borderline poverty stricken tea picking Indians was fairly amusing (apparently 75% of bollywood filmi music videos have at least one scene in a tea plantation).

With the lack of insufferable heat (and occasional genuine cold) we found ourselves doing strange things like walking places (we walked the half hour from our hotel to town just for the fun of it), and being able to buy bag loads of home-made chocolate which they gleefully sell all over town. Of course the second bag made us sick (the Indian kind, not the ohh I just ate two bags of chocolate kind) but it was probably worth it just to get Jacquie a much needed fix.

Regretfully we had to make our way out of the hills to Kochin for the next leg of our trip. But in a fit of unprecedented oarsomeness the Indian government laid on a steam powered rack rail train down the hill. The cars were old-school (with no internal access), dinky, and packed. So much so the guards reallocated our seats so they could pack another partition with additional (fun-sized) locals. Having been moved we found ourselves sitting opposite another couple of NZers, and proceeded to jam a large amount of kiwi catch up into all the bits of the journey where I wasn't hanging out the window looking at the steam train or trying to take photos of the hilly tree-clad panoramas sweeping past on our right.

But of course all good things come to an end and we had to catch a bus, spend the night in grubby old Coimbatore and then catch another (dull diesel) train to make it to the port city (and old Portugese colony) of Kochi. We found quite a nice hotel in the new town and set off to explore the old town aka Fort Cochin. Getting there we got to take one of the local ferries which puttered us sedately across the harbour in half an hour but gave us a great view of all the various inlets, small islands, and waterfront buildings.

The symbol of Kochi are the numerous 'Chinese' fishing nets lining the waters edge. These large wooden contraptions involve big square nets being pulled in and out of the water flat-wise by long cantilevered poles and a team of half a dozen men. I was tricked into helping them out for a few catches, hauling on the ropes and acting as twice the ballast of any of my co-workers. Apparently they only operate the nets just so tourists like me can give them miserly tips, as there aren't enough fish most of the year to make up for their trouble. After this I needed a little bit of a sit down, so we pulled up a tree root and watched a lively game of cricket contested by some local lads. Jacquie even tried her luck as the international umpire in a contested run out, although I'm not sure they believed that tourists should know anything about cricket.

The other thing Kochi is known for is its Antiques shops. A long way back there were a whole lot of Jews in Kochi and being Jews they did very well for themselves, but with the creation of the state of Israel the vast majority of them packed up shop and headed for the holy land. Only there is only so much shop you can pack, so many house loads of high-grade furniture and artifacts were offloaded onto the local market and continued to be onsold for many years afterwards. Of course all the original items are long gone but the shops remain and were a wonderful source of things that were much too heavy for us to buy, although we did find a few small things. We also got to visit the local synagogue which was the first one we've actually been allowed into throughout the whole trip. And it was worth it as it had a very informative display on the history of the Cochin Jews and the synagogue proper was tiled in very nice hand painted blue-on-white Chinese tiles, which made for quite a cultural contrast.

We had much better tour luck in Kochi and took to the back waters behind Kochi with a random assortment of other foreigns and even another kiwi. We took to the big wide waterways on the perfectly flat water and headed out amongst the islands, not that you could tell what was an island and what was the main land. It was all uniformly flat and palm tree laden. We had to navigate around old men is small boats carefully scraping small shellfish from the river bottom with long dustpan like devices. We soon arrived at our first destination, a combination palm sap farm and lime factory. The aforementioned shellfish are way too small to eat, so they just burn them to lime. The palm sap is entirely more interesting as someone would shimmy up a tree, whack a hole in it, and then set a clay pot underneath to catch the sap. The clay pot is important as if the sap is placed in anything else it starts to ferment and six hours later you have palm toddy (and a little while after that you have yucky palm vinegar). So of course we bought some and immediately lamented that six hours was far too long to wait for my tree blood to become an intoxicant.

Soon we were divied up to two smaller boats and started cruising the the tiny canals that criss cross the area. This was actually quite the wildlife trip as despite motoring past a lot of homes, we saw kingfishes, lesser racquet tailed drongos (according to Jacq), and even an itty bitty water snake. We also got a demonstration of coir rope making. Coir is the hairy husk of a coconut and its the fibre that typifies the brown hairy door mat. The rope is made with a small motor which the rope makers feeds a few strands into and then backs away feeding strands into the end of the growing rope as the motor twists them all together.

The main culinary feat of Kerala as far as I'm concerned is Meen Pollichathu. I discovered it by accident ordering pretty at much random, and it is a fantastic dish of steamed fish flavoured with tamarind cooked in banana leaves which makes it fantastically soft and aromatic. I will definitely be on the lookout for a supplier on my return to Auckland.

Further down the coast is the traveller ghetto of Varkala. Just a collection of hotels, restaurants and used book stores perched on cliffs above the ocean. There is supposedly a good beach here, but the huge surf must have washed it away (as it had part of the promenade). I managed one swim although Jacq didn't make it all the way in, it was like Piha on a biggish day with very shifty sand and no life-guards. So mainly we put our feet up, read, ate, and caught up on our feed readers.

By now we were feeling the full effects of the rubbish buses in South India. It took us the whole day to negotiate the three different super-slow buses to get down to Kanyakumari, the Cape Reinga of India (but all upside down). Unfortunately it lacks the hills, and the mixing oceans, but it does have a 40m statue of a Tamil poet-saint built onto an offshore islet. We got shuttled around between that island and another temple-clad island by a very dodgy old ferry and spent most of the time trying to work out which bits of rock had been out of the sun the longest and were therefore the coolest.

Heading back north again and we had an even worse run with buses with huge waits for buses to just start moving. But we got to Madurai a few hours after nightfall and stumbled our way into a somewhat decent hotel that somehow managed to seem entirely disreputable. It wasn't the accommodation, which was classic Indian two-star, clean, dull, and basic, but all the staff seemed to pause at odd times during conversation, trying to pay for breakfast caused all kinds of confusion, and we never allowed to use the lift by ourselves. We were in Madurai to visit the enormous and of course very old temple with its incredibly detailed brightly painted entrance towers. The towers are 40-50 metres tall, and consist of layer upon layer of various plasterwork Hindu deities, making for quite an eye boggling spectacle. We managed to show up on the day of a major festival so the place was packed and we (as non-Hindus) were barred from quite a large amount of the temple. Although this is quite normal for the larger temples in India where there is usually a more holy enclosure in the centre reserved for the devout, while a larger area surrounding it is open to all and (appropriately dressed) sundry. The outer area in question this time had a music and dance performance stage, bangle shops, and children running all over the place, while others prostrated themselves before, burned incense for, and circumambulated various idols. Oh and there was an Elephant.

Temple Elephants have got to be the very bestest part of all Hindu religion. The deal is basically that you search the temple your in until you find an elephant. It may be hiding behind a pillar or another statue of an elephant (or an elephant shaped deity). You ensure you have correct change, elephants do not give change. You join the back of the queue and shuffle up respectfully (queues in front of elephants are the only ones in all of India that follow the traditional western notion of a slow moving single line of people). Upon reaching the front of the queue you offer your money to the elephant. The elephant takes your money with the tip of its trunk which though circular has a top and bottom (or front and back) that can easily grasp things much like a person wearing mittens. If your offering is a coin it slips the coin backwards slightly into the pile of other coins it is holding in its trunk-hand. If your offering is a note it will surreptitiously hand off the note to its trainer. Then the elephant taps you on the forehead and you are bless-ed. What could be simpler.

Actually it gets better because the elephant is even kid-friendly. If you were to guide a terrified looking two-year old towards the elephant it will lower its trunk to the childs level, and then very gently and slowly accept its coin (with and almost audible "taa") and perform a gentle head tap, and then its back up to speed for the next applicant.

Bla bla bla, monstrous buses, bla bla bla, Thanjavur. Thanjavur was a quick stop to have a look at the old palace grounds which were not very palatial but did have an extensive collection of Chola bronzes and a tower. With a whale in it. The bronzes were, well bronze and they were mostly of a lady with many arms standing in a circle. I understand people who are knowledgeable on such things could probably break it down a lot further but it was hot and Hindu art was starting to run together a little. So we climbed a tower, it was big and square and breezy with tiny little stairways and on the third floor there was a complete whale skeleton. Maybe 20 metres long and looking a little lost.

Pondicherry next. An old French colony it promised access to middle quality baked goods and a certain sea-side charm. It got there on the baked goods but the sea-side was pretty barren, and no french charm was in evidence. In fact we had another odd hotel experience, after trying hard to choose one of the few that was not associated with the nearby Auroville commune we indeed wound up at a lovely boutique hotel with the least friendly manageress ever. If in fact I cared what a hotel manager thought of me, I would have been quite offended by the disdainful looks and the look of disappointment when we announced that we were quite happy to stay in a non-smoking, non-drinking establishment and would even promise to take off our shoes at the door. OK I was actually a little offended, but I stayed there and paid for it just to spite her (and yes I am sure that was an effective retaliation).

Mahabalipuram is actually quite nice, even if it is largely unpronounceable. Its claim to fame is having been a stone-carving mecca for many hundreds of years. The town is tiny, about eight streets in a grid but has all kinds of stone monuments scattered about allegedly as advertising for the work of the previous occupants as the town is not at all sacred. So we had a good time, paid our 500 rupees a piece to see the famous shore temple, and then had a good time looking at all the stuff that is in the local park.