On the Other Side of the Fence

 

Trip Laundry List:

 

Day 13

- Wake up in Bangalore, and it felt great to be back in a familiar place

- Continue to bum around, writing, reading, etc.

- Send package of goodies home for the fam-jam, as my sole backpack had become completely packed. By the way, when sending packages from India, you have two options. Option one will get there within 5 business days, but it will cost you a pretty penny. Option two will be cheaper, but it will take around a month, is more likely to get damaged. ALSO, they wouldn't let me send half the stuff cause I didn't have receipts!!! You don't get receipts in most stores here! Needless to say, I won't be buying many more gifts. 

- Go to lunch with my Dad's colleague. Chat and learn about certain events in India history, particularly about Indian politics since independence. As well as hear about the new PM, Modi, who seems to be quite the uniter and game-changer here in India.

-Return to hotel, and meet the tour bus for 7:30 departure to Kerala. Attempt to get as much rest as possible on overnight bus ride. In effect, learn to sleep in whole new positions.

 

Day 14

- Wake up a 5 in the morning to "freshen up" in the least "fresh" hotel I have yet to see in god-knows-where, India. WOW.  Just, wow.

- Back on bus for several more hours, heading for Munnar, our first stop on the trip. Continue to sleep, and enjoy the mountainous environment. Also, almost have monkey sneak through my open window on bus when stopped at Kerala boarder. Brave little fellow, probably seeing if there is anything cool tto steal. Closest I have been to a monkey yet, and by close I mean 6-inches from my face. CRAZY.

- Reach first stop, Eravikulam National Park. Wait for 3 hours in a giant line for who-knows-what. Make friends with the one on the tour who speaks flawless english on the trip. Become adopted by him and his wife, and embrace my new pseudo parents as my own. These people were wonderful.

- Finally reach end of the line we had been waiting in. While everyone else pays 60 rupees, lucky me, being a foreigner, pay 450 rupees! Not that this gets you any special privileges, they just like your money more. Best part is, no one seems to have a clue about what exactly it is that there is to see here. All we know is that you take bus into the national park. I figured that maybe the bus tours your around, but nope, they take you up a mountain, and drop you off. To come back down, guess what.....you stand in line again. However, you do get to walk through the clouds on the 6 km trail, taking in the wonderful views, and check out a bunch of billy-goats......if you're brave enough, and like annoying animals, you can even try and touch one.

- Reach hotel in Munnar, which was actually a lot nicer of a place then I would normally book for myself, and left to our own devices for the evening. I wander to a restaurant that my 2012 Lonely Planet Travel guide suggested, saying they have some traditional Kerala dishes, and once I order, read about how the restaurant has gone down hill lately. Excellent. So that's why I am LITERALLY the only person in it. The food was bad,  but it definitely wasn't good, and given that they were going for upscale, it was way over priced. We live and learn. Lesson learned: read the updated online reviews before you order your food.

 

Day 15

- Wake up, eat breakfast at hotel, embark on Munnar sight-seeing part of tour.

- Munnar sight seeing: lots of tea plantations. Literally mountains covered in tea plants. A new and interesting sight that gets old fast. Visited some other stuff that just really isn't worth mentioning. My impression: You consider these interesting sights? Really? But like no, for real? Ok, we took a boat ride in a pontoon, and the view of nature was nice, but we've been surrounded by nature this entire time......at this point, it's nothing new. The rest was truly unremarkable.

- Return to hotel, left to our own devices. 

- I explore the town centre of Munnar, mostly just wandering in and out of shops. Buy some chocolates, which are big up in the mountain areas, and grab some dosa at a sketchy looking hole-in the wall place that was suggested by my tour guide. Surprisingly quite delicious, and insanely cheap. Furthermore, again, based on the looks of the place, I was pleasantly surprised that they didn't make me sick. WIN.

 

Day 16

- Wake up insanely early to hit the road by 5:30.

- Travel to Kumily, and arrive at Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary. Another not-so-interesting forest preserve, where again, I get to pay 15 times what it cost an India to visit, which is no embellishment. 450 rupees (what I paid), divided by 30 rupees (what everyone else paid), equals 15. Math.

- Once we enter, continue on to the sole attraction they have there.....a wild-life viewing boat ride. Guess what? You wait in line again, for several hours, for this exhilarating 90 minute long cruise in which you will pretty much only see water, trees, and birds. I won't go into the million different ways they could streamline this process, or make it more organized, because more often than not in India, they just don't really seem to care. Which is not to say that some Indians don't get frustrated about this, they do, but in general customer satisfaction is not something that is usually a concern here. Which is stranger, coming from a place on this earth where bad online reviews can destroy your business. 

- Return to hotel, and look up Kumily in my travel guide.

- Kumily, is actually a pretty cool little town. It is relatively close to some attractions and tends to be a usual host to tourists and travelers. Both Lonely Planet, and the random Indian guy I had dinner with in Madikeri, had the same suggestions for entertainment in Kumily. First, a demonstration of Kalari, the local martial arts from the Mudra culture. This show was nuts. Jumping and throwing each other, all the while fighting with sticks, knives, swords, ropes, fists, and legs. I tried to take some pictures, none of which turned out, but I did get some videos.....maybe one day I'll actually upload some media on my blog. Second was another demonstration, whose art form again comes from the Mudra culture. This demonstration explained and displayed a style of theatrical performance known as Kathakali, which involves very elaborate, decadent, and exasperated costumes and make-up, and is while it involves no spoken language, communication is made with technical and specific body language, including eye movements, head movements, hand signals, etc. The first  half of the performance they review the make up, customs, and communication style. The second half they give a performance. Both were quite interesting. 

Side note: I've talked a little bit about this before, but it is astounding how boldly some India's will behave. Throughout the seconding demonstration, people were talking loudly, standing up and walking over to one another, and in general, behaving in a way that a westerner would interpret as being very disrespectful to the performance. It was very annoying. As my pseudo India father would say, India's have too much freedom. They get away with behaving ridiculously sometimes, and no around puts them in their place. Again, the tolerance for other peoples behavior here is very high, which to a westerner, is very very strange. This is something I don't think I can get use to. It as made me a little more a chill person, but they still cross certain lines that will just never be OK in my eyes.

- After the performances, I wander to another place suggested in my guide book, Ebony Cafe. They mostly serve american breakfast food, and they even have beer, although their beer offering is very hush-hush, as they are not licensed to do so. ALSO, they play classic rock. Playing classic rock is a trend in pubs in Bangalore, but it was quite the surprise for a little town like Kumily. Apparently the owner spent sometime in the US during the 60's and 70's. 

- What started off as not the best day, ended with  a wonderful evening. At the end of this day, I formed a new perspective on tours in India.....they are hit or miss. I have had one wonderful tour, and several tours that have some nice highlights, but had a lot of disappointing points. I know I said early that tours can be a great value here, and the right ones still are, but perhaps more often than not, it's probably more worth while to just check out the major attractions on you own. You can skip all the randoms stuff they throw in there, and really give your full attention, and time, to whatever interests you.

 

Day 17

- Another early morning, and off to the backwaters of Kerala, the crown jewel of the trip. Near the coast of Kerala, their is a large inlet of water from the Arabian Sea. The land between this inlet and the open waters is ribbed with snaking canals. In fact, there are so many of these wandering canals that the people who live their use them for regular means of travel. Docks everywhere, storefronts face the waters, their are even a public boat routes (like a public bus system), with various stops that people use to get around. 

- Our tour booked a ferry to take us across the inlet and then through the canals, into the city of Alleppey. The waters were calm, the ride was slow and wondful. Houseboats, usually simple thatchet and wooden huts built on widespread boats, but typically including bathrooms and kitchens. Some can be quite luxurious with glass windows and air-conditioning. Houseboats are a big thing in the area, although they are mostly rented out, and few people live on them regularly. They can be rented out for a day cruise, which usually includes a meal or two, or they can be rented out for several days......you can probably rent them for as long as your wallet will allow. You can also rent canoe, if you want to mosey around at your own pace for a day.

- Overall, this is definitely a must do in when in southern India. I've never seen anything quite like it before. I could have spent all day long just cruising along and taking it all in. Next time, I'll definitely be renting a houseboat. 

 

Story-Time and Reflection:

So, like I noted above, this tour was not the best I had been on. A couple of days, I had more fun exploring on my own after the tour part of the day had ended. However, if not for this tour, I would not have met my pseudo India parents, Vee-Jay and Reena. They had perhaps just a couple of years on my own parents, and both spoke english very well. They were from the suburbs (yes, apparently some major cites in India have suburbs!) of Delhi, but they had lived all over India, due to Vee-Jay's job as an India Army Engineer, although now he is retired. They have two children, a girl and boy. The girl married a Canadian and lives in Toronto, the boy lives somewhere in the States, on the east coast.