First of all, It seems that when I've put this up it's gone over the last note I wrote on here- 'Um, still in Goa.' So could someone, ie Mandy, who may have printed out a copy keep hold of it for me please?! Argh!
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Everybody I meet travelling who has a journal starts off writing in it almost everyday and then gives up completely. The unusual becomes ordinary. So even though I haven't written on here for a few weeks, it's not that bad!
But quite a lot has happened since I last wrote on here, so I'll have to get you all up to speed. I left Goa on the 21st November, on an overnight train to Kochin, the largest city in Kerala. I had a few hours to kill there before get a 2 hour train back on myself to Changannur. But I'm getting ahead of myself. I really didn't want to leave Goa! Arambol is really great, and I'd made lots of good friends. For any of you who can make the reference, it felt like Monday morning at Glastonbury. Except that I was the only one leaving! I did think about just spending the rest of my trip there, but I reasoned that I had to leave sooner or later, and it was best to do it with my wallet and my sanity more or less in one piece. There are A LOT of crazy people in Goa. And I felt pretty good about going to volunteer at the charity. Viswadarsanam is a centre that tries to spread awareness of environmental issues in Kerala, and after my travels in the north of India, I thought that was very good cause!
So, a couple of hours to kill in Kochin. I had some breakfast and then walked down to the harbour though a maze of cottage industries and wholesalers. Walked straight past the ferry stop, then found it about half an hours later. Bizarrely, there's a little shop called 'The Ken Livingstone Cafe'. Apparently, the owner had seen him on TV and decided he liked him. So I got the 20 minute ferry over to old Fort Kochin, took a (very) quick look at the outside of a couple of 16th century churches then decided that lunch was a bit more important. Chatted to some Americans in a little cafe for a while, one of them showed me the old cantilevered Chinese fishing nets on the dock. With 45minutes until my train I said goodbye and went to catch the ferry back. It took me about 10 minutes after getting there and discovering I'd missed the ferry to realise my watch was about half an hour slow. It stopped completely in another hour.
So I had to get a later train. By the time I arrived (I borrowed somebody's phone on the train to ring ahead) my lift had gone and I had to get a taxi, arriving at about 10pm. First impressions of the centre were a little concerning. It was very small, with very few buildings, just a guest's room, an office, another outbuilding and the main house. Viswardarasanam is run by Umesh Babu, a short but large-bearded man, who lives at the centre with his wife Janee, a Keralan couple in their late 50s. That first night, sat in their kitchen, conversation was forced and intermittent, and Umesh seemed a little aggrieved about a mix up of train times which meant he'd waited at the station for ages that afternoon. There were no other volunteers. That night I went to bed wondering what the next month was going to be like, and wondering if I was going to stay.
The first few days, I was constantly asking Umesh what I could do to help, and would eventually be given a small task which would be finished in half an hour, I would then just be told to just 'relax, read a book.' There was no functioning computer, so most of the work could not be done, and they were also replacing the roof of the 'activity room' the other outbuilding, so I couldn't do anything in there either. After a few days, I had a bit of a go, asking why nothing was ready before I'd arrived, and he told me that there had been no money before I'd arrived so nothing could be done. I should also mention that due to diabetes, Umesh had lost much of his eyesight in the last 6 months, and could no longer read or write for himself. So I decided to do as much as I could before another volunteer arrived from London in 2 weeks, and then go to Auroville as I had originally planned. Well, I wasn’t sure how long I’d stay to start with, or what I’d do, but after a week that was the final plan. Auroville is a group of around 40 self-sufficient communities just outside Pondicherry. It was founded in the 60s, and now has a permanent population of around 1400 people from all over the world.
So I did what I could in that first week, preparing for the next week’s ‘One day outdoor nature school’ visits by 2 groups of local school children by going into the nearby town of Pathanamthitta to use the computer and doing what I could at the site. I also helped Umesh with correspondence and some promotional work. After a few days I met Sherif, Umesh’s part-time helper, and the three of us went on a boat trip on a nearby fresh water lake. When I told Umesh I was going to leave at the end of the next week, while we were having lunch in another town where I was working on the computer, he didn’t take the news that well, but then we were soon having the best conversation we’d had since I got there, laughing and joking, and we actually started to like each other.
Over the next week, we took a business/pleasure trip to the capital of Kerala, Trivandrum, as well as trips to the elephant camp (horrible), a Lion’s Club meeting, which I found myself addressing (!), a tea plantation and factory (which was brilliant) and I went to see a Bollywood movie at the cinema the night we were waiting to pick up the new volunteer, Prakesh, from the airport. I couldn’t understand hindi, and Umesh couldn’t see the screen, so between us we got all of it! I liked it though, it was the big hit at the moment – ‘Om Shanti Om’, very expensively made, just like Hollywood, and they through in some English in important places, so I could follow the (very silly) story just fine. With Prakesh, we spent a night on a boat on the famous Keralan Backwaters as well. During the night, Umesh had breathing problems and had to go to hospital, but he was fine and rejoined us in the morning. The same day I, who had been recently boasting of my miraculously good health while I’d been traveling, was ill. However, it wasn’t the famous ‘Delhi Belly’ that everybody gets, just a really bad cold that put me on the sofa for the rest of the day.
During that second week, there was also an incident in a rickshaw. I was sharing one from outside Viswadrasanam to Pathanamthitta, which I’m proud to say I could pronounce well enough by then for most of the locals to understand me, with two locals who were already in it. Umesh had delayed me by an hour or so, so I was going on ahead of him and thought I’d get a rickshaw rather than the bus to get there quicker. There was a small driver, a tall bloke sat next to me, and a crazy beardy religious type the tall bloke kept making gestures at to me to indicate how crazy and beardy he was. All three tried to talk to me all at once in Malayalam, nothing unusual there, But then the driver stops half way in a small town and asks me where I want to go. I told him again, same as the other two, to Pathanamthitta, and showed him the name of the town on some letters I had with me. He tried to snatch at the letters, and then the tall bloke was snatching it back, and then the two of them were arguing, getting in and out of the little rickshaw, shouting and giving each other little slaps in the face. Before long all the other rickshaw drivers nearby where getting involved too. I tried to get in another rickshaw, but then the argument followed me. I still had no idea what it was about, and then the little driver tried to tell people that I’D slapped him. He was obviously really drunk. After a while, somebody found somebody who spoke English, and I was in another rickshaw, alone, to Pathanamthitta. It was all pretty funny, and cheered me up a bit after getting a bit frustrated at the delays! And when I finally got to thje town, Umesh and Sherif were already waiting outside the internet café for me!
When I left the centre on Sunday night, a little more than 2 weeks after arriving, I was actually pretty sad to be leaving. The days with the school kids there had been great fun. They always started out to shy to talk to me, but ended up not leaving me alone. For some reason I ended up singing the national anthem to both groups! But after that, they were much more comfortable with me. By the end I was really find of Umesh, and we were always chatting and making each other laugh. Sherif too was great, and when Prakesh arrived it was nice to have another native English speaker to talk to, and we got on well. Janee was nice, but I always found her more polite than friendly. I got a lot out of it in the end, it was good to be totally emersed in the culture and away from all other tourists, although I don’t think I can eat rice again for a while! I didn’t get any better at eating rice and curry sauce with my hand either. I think I left at the right time- I had a good last week as we tried to fit everything in before I left, and since there wasn’t really enough work for one person, I can’t imagine what it would be like with two.
The coast-to-coast journey from Kerala to Pondicherry in Tamil Nadu, was supposed to be an overnight coach journey of 8 hours to a town I couldn’t remember the name of (it was Coinbatore), then a half hour local bus to Pondicherry, which I was assured the driver would help me catch. I should have looked at the map, or remembered the name of the town so I could look at the map, because Coinbatore was not even half way. The whole journey from Kerala took me 4 buses, and 19 hours. There’s no direct train line on the way back (I’m flying from Kochin) but I’ll try and sort something better out, since I’ll be straight onto a long flight.
Pondicherry is really nice, very French-colonial, and I decided last night to spend the day here, sort out my travel arrangements, write on here and go to Auroville tomorrow morning. So that just about brings you up to speed! I guess this is the penultimate message, the last will probably be written on the way back through here or Kochin, at an airport, or even in South Africa. Very strange to be returning to the real world, and to be starting to go through what I’ve seen in so many people I’ve been traveling with who’ve gone home while I’ve stayed. Until then!
