India - Part III

Oops, forgot something. It's election time in India at the moment, which means every vertical surface has an election poster glued to it, from walls, to rocks, to old ladies too slow to get out of the way. Maybe because there is not a lot of TV coverage, election news is broadcast by cars with loudspeakers. The posters, meanwhile, just have mugshots of smiling politicians, smiling the smile of men thinking about how much loot they will embezzle once elected. ALL the photos are either mugshots or full body shot of the guy walking or, occasionally, shots of the politicians AND their cronies. So lots of pics of Sonya Ghandi and VJ Singh in the background...

And it's funny, but I think the policy of saturating the populace with photos of politicians backfires as you get sick to death of seeing their stupid faces. For example, as we left Munnar there were two guys running localls: Congress and the Commies. Now, the Commie looked right dodgy and the Congress guy looked like a kind and benevelont uncle. But after an hour and about 4,000 posters, you start to notice the beadiness of the eyes, the shifty look, and the hint of evil. And pretty soon, you hate the guy from Congress (and the Commie, who is still right dodgy, but now also a child molester), and you know that if you saw him, you'd get out of the car and punch him in his stupid smiling face.

But then you cross an electoral border and the posters change, and finally you're looking at a Communist who has the look of a guy who tortures kittens, a Congress guy who looks a little gay, and photos EVERYWHERE of Raul F-ing Ghandi, one of the million or so Ghandis (some free, some in jail but still running) that seem to dominate Indian politics.

Would you trust this man?

Or this one?

And what the hell? Communists? Didn't India learn anything from 1991?

India - Part II

Trivandrum.

So next up we went down to Trivandrum, the capital of Kerala. You can tell it's a proper city because some streets have raised sidewalks. The roads are the same as the villages, though: single laned and patchy.

Actually, driving (or being driven) in India has opened my eyes to driving in Dubai. I thought I understood after going to Mumbai, but doing real driving in Kerala is something else. For starters, everything is single lane - but in the Indian sense, which means that if a car is overtaking an auto-rickshaw, and a bus is overtaking that, and you're going faster, then it's ok to overtake the bus, car and auto-rickshaw. And if the same thing's happening on the other side, that's ok too - everyone slows down and starts driving on the (dirt) sidewalk. Sometimes, though, it gets too crowded and someone needs to stop and wait, usually honking at someone to get out of the way first.

"Keep Left" is more a concept than a rule

In fact, honking, as alluded to in my Mumbai post a while back, is a key part of driving in India. Sometimes it means "Hello there, I am approaching from behind, so don't be frightened"; sometimes it means "I say, can you please move over so I can pass"; or perhaps "Hey! Dickhead! Hurry the hell up and get out of my way!"


Anyway, We had a look around Trivandrum with a guide, which was excellent. He really knew his stuff and spent a lot of time explaining about Hinduism and the gods and their stories in the museum. He also took us to a famous handicrafts store where I picked up a great (stone) chess set for about US$40 and some paintings for about the same.

Trivandrum from the Taj Hotel

We took a day trip to Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India. Just of the coast is the shrine on a rock where some great Indian thinker meditated for a few days some years back, and now it's a big tourist attraction. And while it's not a total Dog on the Tuckerbox, to be honest it's not far off.

We were meant to be able to see the three sees from this vantage point (ie, Arabian Sea, Indian Ocean, Bay of Bengal). I guess we technically could see them as this was the point they all met, but it was difficult to make out the different colours as we'd been assured. It's pretty crazy to think, though, that if you headed out from there, the next landfall would be Antarctica.

Kovalam Beach.
Final stop was the Leela Hotel, famous for being super luxurious, etc, yet bugger-all per night (around AED700 or so). And yes, it was nice, but it was a little bit colour-by-numbers. Maybe we've been spoilt by frequenting 5-Star hotels in Dubai so often, but the Leela seemed like just another super luxurious hotel that could have been anywhere on Earth. (Unlike the Coconut Lagoon which was definitely Indian and hence our favourite place.)

The Sky Bar, an alright spot for a drink

The Leela also nearly killed me. After surviving 10 days without illness, I was taken down either by cheesecake or lime juice on our last full night. The next day, our last, featured an all time record for me for bathroom trips (7 in 7 hours, 10 in 12h) which completely cleaned me out. So much so that I couldn't eat when taken out for dinner by the travel agent (and friend of Anand's) on the last night, nor could I eat last night at a friend's place here in Dubai!

So that's India. More photos, as always, at picasaweb.google.com/njlander. In summary, nice trip, great honeymoon, glad to be home.

India - Part I

Oh my god, I'm so slack - nothing since January. Apologies. Here is some news:

Munnar.

Munnar is tea country. It is where Sarah and I started our (overdue) honeymoon in Kerala, India. The town is high up in the mountains, about 3,000m above sea level, and the climate is cool despite the tropical latitude.

And there is tea: beautiful tea plantation on slopes of about 60°; a tea museum with working tea factory; whole leaf tea; dust tea; black, green, white and masala tea. We even stayed in a place called the Tea Country Hotel. Now, what type of tea do you reckon they served?

Tetleys.

(Tetleys, in fact, was served all over Kerala, and while way better than gut-rot Liptons, the standard hotel tea in Dubai, it is still really bad.)

Our time in Munnar also took in a trip to a dam which our driver, reluctant to carry on further, perhaps, or maybe eager to get back to hanging out with the other drivers, assured us was the same as Top Station. Now, I suspect that Top Station might have been near or at the top of the mountain and would have a killer view. The dam was picturesque, but the vista from a valley just isn't the same.

Kumarakom.

Four long hours after leaving Munnar we arrived at Kumarakom, just 175km away. We stayed at Coconut Lagoon, a very chilled resort on the backwaters where we could relax, get off Indian food for a bit (turns out Sarah doesn't like it) and get massaged.

Aruyvedic massage is a bit different to what I'm used to. For starters, the guy makes you strip, ties a cord around your waist, then tucks in a bit of material front and back for modesty, which he then takes off once you're face down on the table. The hard wooden table. With no hole for your face. Anyway, after some rubbing, he takes a small sack of herbs, heated to near the temperature of the sun, and tries to transfer the healing properties of thyme directly to your muscles by hitting you with the sack as hard and as often as he can. You basically come out of it smelling like a roast.

But it's good stuff: I had two in Coconut Lagoon, just focussing on my messed up, stressed out shoulders and back where the guy tried to squeeze the muscle knots into another dimension. God it hurt... But as I say, good stuff.

Back to Kumarakom, though, and Coconut Lagoon. This place rocks and would be perfect for a week long party. Anyone interested in a cheap holiday with a good crew: I want to recruit enough people to fill 50 rooms in around a year from now. There's a pool, you get there on a little boat, there's a great massage centre and free yoga every morning! Let me know.

Backwaters.

Coconut Lagoon is on the backwaters, a series of lakes and canals just back from the coast. Now, I didn't mean to rough it, I really didn't. I only wanted to spend an afternoon cruising the backwaters before heading back to the resort, but the agent suggested a houseboat, my friend Anand told me I should "rock the boat", it being our honeymooon and all, and there is something romantic about cruising around in a private boat being waited on hand and foot for a day and a night. But the truth is, after a couple of hours there's nothing new to see, and once it gets dark you realise that an afternoon cruise was certainly the best option.

Of course, I should have guessed that the water on the boat would not be from a tank of pristine, or even semi-clean water when I stepped aboard. And I was foolish not to twig when we washed our hands and they dried sticky. But it was only when I gave into the accumulated grime, sweat, suncream and mosquito repellent and stepped into the shower that I realised the taps drew directly from the fetid river that smelt of sewage (due, no doubt, to the high levels of sewage in the water).