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After blogging yesterday (Wednesday 24th) I returned to the street-stall where I’d eaten the previous night. The results: a Bruce full of dosa and vegetable curry but also a Bruce who had been shat on by a passing bird. One of my fellow diners told me that this was good for my character. I can understand the logic of this but I was a little pushed to wholeheartedly join in with his amusement.

The rest of this entry just a little picture-heavy.

DOSA AND BIRDSHIT DELIGHT

TEMPLES AND TOURISM
Today (Wednesday 24th) was another guided-tour day – my last, I think. This is not because I didn’t enjoy it but because I prefer not to be feel as though I’m being led by the nose all of the time. I think I’d sooner make my own mistakes, amid the occasional triumph when I manage to do something all by myself. (“Gonna take my shoes off and throw them in Periyar lake because I’ve got two feet in the water” – thank you Ms Bush!)

The descent today into Tamil Nadu wasn’t without its hairy moments but I thought at the time that I was getting used to overcrowded buses with suicidal drivers. The route dropped maybe 1000 metres in 6 or 7 km to the Tamil plains, then passed through a region of the largest fields I’ve seen in India The crops where mostly grapes and cococuts, as far as I could see, with a couple of home-grown giant religious statues near a small village called Gudalur.

vinyards

We whized past them too fast for me to photograph A few kilometers further is a town called Cumbum. (My India atlas spells it Kambam.)

It really is called Cumbum

	Statue of Gandhi in Cumbum
	Cumbum street

	temple near Cumbum bus stand
	Parvati temple nea Cumbum bus stand

From their my tour-guide took us onto the most crowded bus I’ve experienced yet. It was a wee 20-seater, so packed that two blokes were hanging out of the back doorway. (The door itself had long since been ripped out.)

A few worrisome kilometers took us to Tirali waterfalls. It’s a pilgrimage/religious centre: most people arrive by bus, truck or car, a few staying at a government-run guesthouse about 1 km from the falls. The falls themselves are reached by old-ish concrete steps, past stalls selling food, cigarettes, towels, combs, shampoo and other sundries. There were quite a few people drying themselves after visiting the falls. Many of the women were standing with companions who held the wearers’ saree ‘tails’ to dry them.

The path narrows near the top of the slope to the falls, where metal rails separate women from men. (Children seem to go with either parent, no matter what gender they are.) Everyone can see everyone else but the rails would stop all but the most ardent groper. Men in underpants (mostly boxer shorts) or lunghis and fully-clothed women stood on a railed-off concrete ledge and showered under the falls. Most men and a few of the women used shampoo or soap.

	Tirali falls
	a bridge near the car-park on the way to the falls
	as above

Of course I had to try this but was too, ahem, modest to remove my lunghi in public and hadn’t brought any soap or shampoo. But standing under the water was breath-takingly cold and refreshing. I think a lot of folk were amused by the sight of me enjoying the falls and then walking back down the steps in a soaking lunghi. Mostly this amusement doesn’t bother me but occasionally I think I’d like to stand out a lot less. I changed into trousers behind some bushes near the beginning of the path – thank goodness I’d brought them.

	freshly-washed pilgrims
	pilgrims’ clothes drying on their bus

Roy, my guide, then took me to some nearby temples – this involved a 2km walk and the loss of a bag of puffed rice to a rampantly greedy macaque. At this temples, there is a small hole in the face of a wee cliff. The hole is about 2 feet wide by 1 foot hight. A few folk were chanting prayers outside the hole before slithering through it into a chamber which, according to Roy, could hold 30 people. There was no hint that I should go in: a relief because I really didn’t fancy it.

small temples near road by start of path to falls

	near to where I took the previous photo is a brand-new temple: the cement hasn’t yet been painted
	Women who haven’t had children by the time they want to (apparently usually within a year of marriage) leave these clothes at temples as part of their fertility prayers

	Stream at the start of the path to the main temple
	Some children who’d seen the adults in the last photo asked to have their picture taken of course wanted me to photgraph them too

	these two asked to be reshot
	This not-so-little bugger pinched my food!
	one of the shiva temples – apparently old but very venerated

	some pilgrims outside the chamber
	you can just see the ever-burning(?) lamp
	an altar to shiva (see the yoni and lingam at the back and nandi, shiva’s mount and companion[?] at the front)
	more prayers for fertility

We bussed back to Cumbum and then back to Kumily, occasionally chatting but mostly staring out of the windows at the greenery that coats the escarpment back up into Kerala. I’m going to have a day of private wondering around Kumily tomorrow and then maybe move on to other places.

I spent most of the rest of the day chilling out on my hotel’s balcony and chatting with Roy and his mate Osaka. I get the feeling Roy’s more than just a sociable drinker – maybe it was his downing a quarter-bottle of brandy in no time flat that gave me this feeling.

kids near my hotel climbing mango trees

Later that evening I ate at a posh-looking ‘pure-veg’ restaurant. I’m still boggled that they did not serve any form of tea.

I didn’t sleep at all well at Woodlands on the night of the 21st (after my ‘trek’). I know children can’t be blamed (much) for carrying on all night but the adults should have known better. So, following the advice of my guide (dunno if he gets a cut but I don’t really care) I’ve moved to a ‘homestay’ called Victoria Tourist Home. Homestays are basically bed-and-breakfast setups but this one has big rooms with ensuite facilities and hot water for 160 rupees a night.

POLL
There may be a supervisor job going in this cybercafe. What do people think about me going for it?

MONDAY 22ND APRIL
I’d talked with my ‘trek’ guide about places near here I’d wanted to see and ended up taking a long journey by autoricksaw with his mate Sumod. I was taken around what claimed to be the original spice-garden in this area and learnt a few things about the different spices that are grown here. I hope I can remember some for longer than I’ve remembered Devanagiri characters.

	pretty flowers at Spice Garden
	more pretty flowers at Spice Garden
	even more pretty flowers at Spice Garden
	I loved the detail on this section of bamboo stem.
	Cardomom pods growing on the plant
	unripe ‘tomato’ aubergines

The second stop was the Connemara tea factory: there’s a good description here and here’s wikipedia’s wise words. Photography was very strictly forbidden inside the factory.

tea bushes interspersed with silver oak (used for building and fuelling the drying-ovens)

Finally, we bumped and tortured the ‘auto’ up miles of really rough track to Granbi viewpoint (about 1400 metres). Here we sat and communed with nature for a couple of hours, occasionally chatting with young folk from Chennai (Madras) but mostly, when I could psyche people into shutting up or simply ignore them, listening to birdsong and watching the mist curl through the distant valleys. I was at peace enough to receive the beginnings of what might turn into a poem. I’m doubtful about my poetic skils and so won’t be sharing the actual words…

	view from Granbi
	another view from Granbi. Can you feel the waves of love beaming down on the planet right now?

My memory of this day was tempered by the sight of an old woman walking bare-foot down the road carrying a handful of cow-dung (for fuel) in her bare hand. It’s almost certainly obscene that I had the luxury of an autorickshaw for excursions while she had to travel like this for existence. I should have thought to tell Sumod that we should at least take her the rest of her journey but was too surprised to think of this at the time.

We then found a much better road back down to the main road (NH-220 from Kottayam to Kumily) and rattled our way back to Kumily, stopping at a dhaba in Vandiperiyar for lunch (Sumod had the main offering: rice and fish curry but I eventually got a masala dosa and really enjoyed it.)

Back at Victoria , I slept from about 4 to 9pm and then crawled out in search of food and email. Got the latter easily at the post office and Sumod helped me order vegetable curry and chapattis from a handcart-stall near the bus stand. (He was queuing for customers with his rickshaw right by the stall.)

TUESDAY 23RD APRIL
Today I tried the Periyar park official boat trip. They don’t promise you’ll see anything apart from trees, water and climate and the trip lived up to this, apart from a distant glimpse of what might have been wild pigs.

	view from the tour boat of Periyar lake
	Some of the trees here have the most beautiful flowers.

My original ‘trek’ guide took me swimming in the pool at the base of the local hydro-electric dam. We couldn’t stay for too long – the local workers didn’t mind but an inspector was due to arrive and he might have objected.

	pretty flowers around Kumily. It’s taken me until my 5th decade to begin to appreciate their beauty
	base of a banyan tree
	top part of a banyan tree

I’m a lot less pleased with the remake of King Kong. It’s not a big ape, it’s a huge turkey. Not quite as bad as the Tim Hines version of War of the Worlds (Here’s ggrieg’s review of that gobble-monster) but the only way I could enjoy it was as a comedy and spot-the-homage session. Don’t waste your money even renting this film. I’m glad it only cost me the equivalent of 50 pence.

Tomorrow I’m going on a short trip to nearby parts of Tamil Nadu. This may be quite lovely – temples, waterfalls and other scenic stuff. The day after I might spend just wondering around Kumily, taking photographs so that I have a record of a small town.

See you later spacecats!

EDIT: just checked out an Indian marriage-broker website. They list potential brides’ complexions. Yick.

EDIT: now with pix

AROUND KUMILY

	local political grafitti
	I won’t get treated by these people!

DRACULA LIVES!
So yesterday I booked myself a guided tour of the forest around here in the hope of getting close to wild big animals: there’s elephants, big cats, bears and buffalo here. No sign of them (plenty of elephant tracks around though) but I can report another Bruce-first: I’ve had my blood sucked by a leech.

They’re funny creatures: they stand on leaves in paths, waving their ends around. They look like animated nails on prozac at a trance rave: jerking and waving away in the air. I was wearing long thick socks and long trousers so most of them didn’t get anywhere. My guide helped me brush a lot off and dislodged the rest with tobacco powder.

However one sod was clever – it hid in my trouser leg so when I changed my socks back in Kumily, it got a chance to latch onto my ankle and start sucking. I noticed a damp patch on my sandal strap and saw red juice leaking out. The little sod had gorged so much he was around 5mm thick (they start about 2mm thick) and leaking. My guide pulled him off and put tobacco on the cut to stop the bleeding.

I think we walked around 6 miles through dense forest – grasses taller than my head and beautiful trees with macaques and howler(?) monkeys occasionally letting us know we were trespassing. It’s quite beautiful: I hope the photos do it justice.

	‘tribal’ Ganesha temple in the jungle
	view towards Periyar (looking east)
	view of Kumily (looking north)
	view into Tamil Nadu (looking east)
	rice(?) fields to the east

	flying ants’ nest
	banyan – I’m told it slowly surrounds and kills its host

	dunno but they’re pretty!
	mimosa flowers

The walk has aggravated my left knee (injured when I was training to run a marathon ages ago) and I’m now hobbling like an arthritic wheelchair with triangular wheels.

What is it about me? In addition to having various dodgy and inebriated characters offering to help me find an Indian woman, I was chatted up yesterday in Kottayam bus stand by a bloke. I suppose I should take it as a compliment to my youthful beauty.

Anyway, having told my fancier that he was on a hiding to nothing, I ended up in a brief conversation with a young Indian woman whose father is a bishop currently lecturing in an irish university. She’s studying psychology in Melbourne and is very christian. The contrast between her and the immediately previous conversation had me in stitches.

My bus to Kumily passed through villages sporting decorative arches and tinsel, as if some big celebration was imminent. There were huge numbers of christian churches – I’ve seen more nuns in two months in India than in the whole of the rest of my life. As the road wound up and up into the western Ghats, it also passed a lot of rubber trees: the tapping process now appears to incude protecting the cut with plastic sheeting. I have no idea why this made me think of Tom Lehrer’s MLF Lullaby.

In Kumily, I’m staying in the Tourist Bhavan part of Woodlands Prime Castle: I have a 3-metre by 3-metre cell with a double bed, table and mirror for the amazing cost of 100 rupees a night. When I lifted the cover, an insect scampered under the pillow so I’ve slept on top of the cover, inside my bugbag and under a lunghi because it’s actually chilly up here.

OK, time for breakfast and some orientation…

I wish I could take the credit for that idea but it’s from a comic I read in my misbegotten youth. I think the comic starred Plastic Man and the brainwasher was invented by, then used on, professor Albert Ergberg. If this detail can stick in my head for years, why can’t devanagiri characters stay for a few weeks? Enough of this – normal service WILL be resumed…

So yesterday I bought a replacement battery charger (my nice shiny UK one appears to have fallen victim to India’s frequent power outages) and eventually left Ernakulam, taking the ‘Venad Express’ to Kottayam, halfway between Ernakulam and Kumily.

	folk waiting on the platform ahead of me
	folk waiting on the platform behind of me. All of them would cram themselves on the train as it started moving.

The train departed on time and arrived in Kottayam about 20 minutes late – there was a long stop at a tiny halt about halfway through the journey for no apparent reason. The route passed through fertile land and villages that called to me and past a filthy-looking dairy that didn’t appeal at all. Somewhere (can’t recall now) I saw what appeared to be jackfruit growing on the branches of trees, not the main stem.

a new building we passed

don’t look back in anger

The ordinary cars were of course crowded and standing by the open door was the only way I could breath. Sitting at the open door was even more respiration-friendly until it began to rain.

crowded carriage

Of course, this was an understatement: the heavens opened and liquid hell poured out. The rain didn’t stop until some time after 4am this morning.

view from my balcony

view from my balcony – I like the ‘abstract’ effect

At Kottayam, I toyed with the idea of staying in a railway retiring room but finding tha a night in a hotel would only cost 30 rupees more, the hotel won. I’m glad of this – I got a huge, clean, room with en suite bathroom and shower (cold water only) plus a sachet of shampoo, a small bar of soap and a clean towel for 230 rupees.

The hotel (the ‘Ambassador’ on KK Road) has a bar which appears to be the local pub – brandy and (not much) soda was disappearing down a gaggle of throats at a vast rate. I drank a beer and a soda water and then escaped to watch the rain at the hotel’s front door. Various folk were there, waiting for autorickshaws and other transport to take them and their thoroughly wetted whistles home while keeping them dry.

One of the inebriates, a bank manager with the State Bank of India, asked the usual question and then whispered into my ear that he could help me find a companion. I laughed it off but again I’m disturbed and a bit insulted by this sort of offer. I hope his head is pounding this morning – he reeked of brandy.

Oh well, time to move on to Kumily. Kottayam’s a friendly place dominated by a catholic church but has nothing that makes me want to stay here.

Last night I ate a masala dosa in a branch of ‘Indian Coffee House’, a workers’ co-operative chain that seems to cover central Kerala. The potato mix at the centre of the dosa was red with tomato and was nearer an extremely thick soup in consistency than the ‘bubble-and-squeak’ I’ve encountered so far. It was palatable but I’ve enjoyed the other variety more.

This morning I tried ‘vegetable cutlets’ and ‘aloo masala’: aloo masala (literally spiced/flavoured potato) was the stuff that had been inside last night’s dosa and vegetable cutlets appeared to be balls of a close relative covered in flour and then deep-fried.

So I’ve definitely reached my spud quota (thank you Bill Hicks!).

Meanderings through this regeionof Ernakulam confirm its similarity to Birmingham: all sorts of engineering works, any amount of small shops selling metal tubes in various sections and almost no end of clothing wholesalers and retailers. Time to move on.

Ernakulam notes and reasons to be pleased or cautious just now.

SUNNY
Again, a sunny mood prevails despite being about to spend another in a city. Firstly, with huge thanks to my father for his time and PC, I know that the vast majority of the photos I’ve taken so far are safe and sound in the UK. Yeehah: I can delete them from my camera and restart using a likeable resolution!

Also, when I booked in for tonight, my hotel offered me two unheard-of bona: clean sheets and a clean towel. I didn’t need the sheets and there hadn’t been a towel in the room originally. However, the offer of a towel really pleased me: I would be able to shower this evening and tomorrow morning without needing to pack a wet towel. This also makes the most of my own towel being washed yesterday. A simple thing and probably not worth this many words but it’s been unique in my Indian experience.

Today also served notice that a feared dose of Mughals’ other revenge wasn’t in progress. At the time I wasn’t in the best possible place to receive the notice but no harm has been done.

DELIGHT
I may have been silly however. This evening I bought another bottle of pepsi and downed it rapidly. I was still thirsty and noticed the stall had bottles of ‘Maaza’ (a soft, non-fizzy, mango drink. The stall-holder looked in his freezer and said he didn’t have any cool bottles of Maaza but had ‘Mango treat’, which was very similar. I have no worries about the bottle he produced from his freezer but I allowed him to put ice in it. It’s likely the ice was made from his tapwater and possible that it wasn’t totally safe.

I also talked with the stallholder’s mate, a guy who makes and sells soada water: it’s used by many stalls to make lime-sodas which are refreshing mixes of soda water, cordial and freshly squeezed lime. There’s no guarantee that the glass has been washed in totally safe water* and the lime is occasionally squeezed through manky-looking sieves. It certainly hasn’t done him any harm: he’s got muscles like rocks.
*it will have been washed

I didn’t think that the soda water* I’ve drunk would be unsafe but the stallholder’s mate’s pedal-bike was loaded with crates of bottles of soda-water. Since quite a few of them had originally contained pepsi, mirinda and other soft drinks, there’s a chance that some of the soda-water I’ve drunk wasn’t from original bottles either.
*I drank these neat because I didn’t totally trust the glasses, sieves and cordial.

Oh well, my digestive traumas have been nowhere near as bad as they could have been so I’m not worried. Nor should the above be read as me accusing anyone. I’ll keep on drinking soda water because it’s a refreshing alternative to warm water from my filter-bottle but I will be a bit circumspect about soda-water bottles.

Shampoo in India appears to be sold in strips of 8ml sachets, as are crisps, paan, detergent, juice and other items. Stallkeepers will have a bar above their heads with strips of sachets dangling from them, not unlike a delicatessen dangling strings of continental sausages in front of its clientelle. While the crisps and paan aren’t that much use for personal hygiene (and 8ml of crips hardly satisfies my appetite), I appreciate the shampoo sachets. If one of them was to burst in my rucksac, 8ml might not be a disaster. A full bottle would. I’m not keen on the extra use of plastic and so will cross these sachets off the Indian experiences I intend to repeat. Now where is Ernakulam’s branch of the Body Shop…?

… means I’m staying in Ernakulam another day longer than I’d intended. However I’va had a new experience at a tiny roadside dhaba. I’d bought a pepsi (it was the only drink he had in a glass bottle and I was desperate) and was sitting drinking it when the owner brought out a bag of ‘instant iddly/dosa’ mix. He opened it, tipped some into a jug and then started making dosa. I had to try one.

They’re not as thin or nice as the dosa I’ve had before but are far better than wheat-flour dosa and are quite filling. Thank you for this, Ernakulam!

Well, I’m in a much better mood than yesterday: today has been a fun but touristy day and I may have a chance to get first-hand info on Assam, another must-do place to visit.

ILL IN THE HEAD?
I know I’m in a better mood: Radio Bruce has stopped transmitting Pink Floyd and Roger Waters music and is instead regaling me with blasts from the past by those American punk-meisters, The Dead Kennedies: especially from Fresh fruit for rotting vegetables. The first tune to assault my mental eardrums had these lyrics:

Efficiency and progress are ours once more, now that we have the neutron bomb: it’s nice and quick and clean at gets things done…

Of course the meisterwerks are Holiday in Cambodia and California Über Alles. I’m torn between the original and the reworked version of the latter, retitled We’ve Got a Bigger Problem Now: original power or sly, thoughtful reworking – the choice is yours, pop pickers!

CHEMICAL WAREFARE?
Anyway, after a disturbed night, I got back to the tourist desk at 8.30 this morning and was driven to the start point for the tour. On the way through Ernakulam, we picked up a family from Assam and a Nepali economist who works with a US-based development-promoting NGO.

At the start point, a Qualis van with several more Indian families drew up. I think most were Tamils (the mens’ build and bearing reminded me of Sopranos characters!) but there was one Sikh family from Delhi: in all 18 of us. We were loaded onto a ‘houseboat’ which took us downriver to where the river broadened into a huge lake with several ‘exits’. Here, men legally dig and dive for freshwater bivalves (there was some confusion as to whether they’re oysters or mussels) and illegally excavate sand for the building industry. Despite being highly illegal because it apparently increases flooding after monsoons, sand is big business here.

	setting off
	waterfront activity
	mussels and sand come from here
	a dunny?
	the lake was huge!

Along the edges of the lakes and rivers, traffic flowed slowly by and there were glimpses of a still extant, simpler life.

We were taken to a ‘factory’ that processes bivalve shells into calcium hyroxide for the chemical, pharmaceutical, paan and paint industries. They mix the shells with coke in kilns and set light to the mix: the burning coke – almost pure carbon – ‘pushes’ carbon dioxide out of the shells (almost pure calcium carbonate) according to:

C(s) + O2(g) –> CO2(g) – ΔH
CaCO3(s) –> CaO(s)* + CO2(g) + ΔH
*calcium oxide, aka quicklime

(I’m quite pleased I can get that all right first time.)

The ‘burnt’ shells are still intact but are pure white. Addition of water causes

CaO(s) + H2O(l) –> Ca(OH)2(s)* – rather large ΔH
*calcium hydroxide, aka slaked lime

	where the shells are roasted
	storage for the slaked lime

In this village (and presumably others), people grow a lot of spices and ayurvedic-medicinal herbs: a trainee homeopath amongst us was taking copious notes. The guide, a villager, seemed at first to say that diabetes can be cured by using a certain herb. It turned out that he wasn’t saying this but that the herb seems to mimic insulin injections without the accompanying injection traumas and that, according to him, it avoids the microvascular damage that repeated hyper- and hypo-glycaemic events cause. I wish I’d taken notes here but I’d brought no paper, assuming that if I did it would get wet.

This is nutmeg, beloved of out-of-pocket junkies, those in need of sexual rejuvenation, those suffering from (er, I forgot!) and cooks alike: remedies are available from the fruit, the red seed-coat and the seed itself.

nutmeg

This is a vanilla creeper. Vanilla powder may be worth more weight-for-weight than finest charlie!

vanilla creeper

There is also a fruit that looks very similar ot a mango but has a high concentration of HCN. It’s apparently the top method of suicide in Kerala.

We passed several other tourist boats during the day. There are also local ferries from place to place but apparently no timetable that would enable me to island-hop.

more tourists

Of course, being in a boat travelling through jungle brought out my Apocalypse now fantasies.

75 clicks

But these were dispelled by a hearty lunch. Half of the Indians availed themselves of cutlery. I didn’t – maybe I’m a poseur but I like this way of eating.

lunch

The youngest child of the Assamese family had a name that sounded remarkably like Mutley.

Assemese and Dheli-ite girls playing with a local goat

After lunch, we were taken to a smaller river and loaded into smaller canoes that took us along streams through tiny islands. I lost count of the times we interrupted people bathing in the water and I wanted to join them.

That’s Cambodia Captain. That’s classified, soldier!

Our first stop was a settlement/home where people manufacture coir rope from coconut husk. Once the husk has been soaked and dried to get the raw fibre, it’s spun into string. Two ‘ends’ from both of these women’s bags are hooked onto the spinning wheel which twists the string that’s created as the women walk backwards. At the end of the ‘wicket’, one woman uses a wooden gizmo to twist the single strands into two double strands. She then loops these, puts them on a pile of finished loops and then the process starts again. I was told they get 50 rupees a kilo of finished product: some guesses at time and distance and another relevant piece of data which I now forget enabled me to estimate they can make 50 rupees’ worth of rope in an hour.

We were also given fresh coconut milk to drink: just an unpleasant as the first time I tried it. The shells were then cracked open so we could ‘enjoy’ the fresh coconut ‘meat’. Sorry but it’s slimy and yucky and needs to be dried before I can enjoy it.

	fresh coconut
	spinning coir
	spinning coir
	spinning coir
	spinning coir

Finally were were silently puntedd back to the startpoint and driven back to Ernakulam.

	more tourists
	kingfisher
	boat construction
	pretty!