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!

WHEN THE GOING GETS TOUGH
I was in a foul mood when I wrote this piece: this was due to two silly things, one of which was very annoying. The only-silly thing was the sight of an Indian carpark. C’mon guys: I know you treat your cars rough but bumping them up concrete steps to park them? WTHF? It fits with the rest of Indian road-sense but that’s where the logic stops.

car park

The annoying and silly thing? Indian pavements (where they exist) are slabs of concrete over the open sewers. The slabs’ irregular heights and the gaps between them are usually enough to either trip you up or simply let the pong of rancid sewage mixed with Jeyes’ fluid assault you. However, on the MAIN DRAG of Ernakulam, in their busy, posh shopping street which in other ways is reminiscent of Oxford Street in London or the posh bit of Princes Street in Edinburgh, the pavements are still dead rough, unlit and in one place, without warning or barrier, there’s a huge gap in the pavement that reveals a shit-pit into which I’d have fallen if I hadn’t stopped just in time to consult my map. I’m glad I’m moving on soon!

nearly my final resting place

A LIFE ON THE BILLY WAVE
Well, today’s been another hit-and-miss day. My hotel charges over double the amount per item of laundry that I’ve been charged in other places. I was tempted to try to find a laundry for myself but somehow gave in to their blandishments. Then on to do what I’d intended to do yesterday.

I then returned to the park where I’d left my padlock last night. It’s closed each day until 3pm. I attracted the attention of a park-keeper: he either didn’t understand or didn’t care and sent me on my way. Fortunately for my vibrams, my way was all of 100 metres to the wonderful tiny Tourist Desk inside the local bus stand next to the main jetty.

Yes, Ernakulam has an integrated transport node, just about. (There’s 20 metres of open rough-ish land between the two. Compare that to St Andrews’ bus and train situation and weep, ye St Andreans!) Ahem, I digress. Anyway, I’ve booked myself on an all-day backwaters boat tour tomorrow: could be fun, could be cheesy but worth finding out.

From the main jetty, a 3-rupee ferry took me to Fort Cochi. Understandably, it’s quite touristified: many places offering cybercafes (for about 15 rupees for 30 minutes) and burning camera cards to CD. This beats Ernakulam hollow for IT kit: this is the first place I’ve found in Ernakulam with winXP boxes – just about everywhere else I’ve seen, even on the main drag, uses win98. Among other things (insert customary Bruce-rant against Windows), I have win98 drivers for my card reader and flash-drive but I don’t want to try to install them on someone else’s box. At the moment I’m waiting for LJ to finish receiving pix so I can decorate this entry.

Enough! I started walking towards the part of Fort Cochi I wanted to see and was accosted by an autorickshaw driver who tried to tell me that I was 2km from where I wanted to go and going away from the sights I ‘should’ see first anyway. He couldn’t understand that I had no interest in them but he did show me a much more detailed map of the area: it even had street-names. So I bargained with him: you take me to the tourist place where you got that map and I’ll hire you for the amount the distance is worth. His ‘counter-proposal’ was to accept this but say that I must at least go into one shop with which he had an arrangement on the way.

This seemed fair enough so I let him take me to the shop – which was in the area I wanted to be at. I looked inside for 5 minutes, noting the number of second mortgages I’d need to buy anything there, took their business card, came out, got taken to a tourist info place where I got two decent-looking maps, paid the driver and got away.

The first place I wanted to see was the ‘chinese fishing nets’. Huge square frames of net are raised and lowered into the water, scooping up fish (apparently – they weren’t in action when I arrived). Seems a bit rough on the fish but they look amazing.

Chinese Fishing Nets

The only other place nearby I wanted to see was Koder House, a house which has a bridge across a road to another: it’s quite cute. I then walked towards Mattancherri, the other side of the island. Thanks to to reality not being exactly in line with the maps (I blame reality), I ended up slightly north of where I wanted to be but this was a blessing in disguise – I past the first place I recall seeing in India that sells honest-to-goodness postcards and got glimpses or normal life around here! It’s also a perfume shop: Fort Cochi and Mattancheri live on exporting spices and essential oils and seem to have done for thousands of years. No wonder all the world and his boyfriend sees to have lived here.

	local school
	advertising

	a catholic church
	a local river – I liked the view
	Plus ca change: there’s no new ways of defacing posters
	water tank

During the walk I was accosted by two boys who seemed to be about 12 and middle-class: designer-ish jeans and school-books. They showed me they were studying MS Excel at school and then asked me to give them my pen-knife and ring! Er, no!

I also received today’s offer of marijuana from a bloke who saw me checking reality against my map. (I thought I had it folded small enough to not appear too gawky.) I dunno: who is stupid enough to trust a random offer like this: either you get separated from your cash very quickly or you get separated from your cash and your liberty (or even huger wodges of cash buying that back) when the vendors brings the police back with him. (It’s been only men who’ve made me this offer.)

I got to Bazar Road and walked south to get to the ‘dutch palace’ (which looked so unappealing I walked on) and then to Jew Town. It has, I believe, the oldest extant synagogue in India. I didn’t have the 2 rupees that would have bought me an entrace ticket (just several 100 rupee notes) but the ticket collecter let me in anyway: it’s beautiful!

A guide was selling postcards and souvineers: I bought two postcards and a wee booklet entitled Kerala and her Jews. (The change let me pay my entrance fee.) The synagogue has beautiful lamps of Venetian (Murano?) glass and hand-made chinese floor-tiles: these are the reason for removing footwear before entering. (I had a chat with the ticket collector about the possible religious significance of this and of not being allowed to take video photography of inside the synagogue, even though still photography is permitted. She says there’s no religious reason for this either. I’d be interested in comments on this from other jews.)

	synagogue altar
	synagogue altar
	synagogue altar
	floor tile
	Murano(?) lamps
	inscriptions

I’ve also experience the second-strangest (to me, so far) fizzy drink India has to offer: ‘Pops’ ginger soda: quite nice but still leaving an aftertaste that could only be washed away with Mirinda (Indian equivalent of Fanta). The strangest I’ve tasted is ‘Jeera Jaz’ which is cumin-seed flavoued soda water: two more of those and I’d have been hooked!

The final place I wanted to see in Fort Cochi/Mattancherri was something I’d only seen on the maps I’d obtained: the ‘elephant gate’. I was taken there by autorickshaw becasuse I’d failed to find it in reality. This is not surprising because it’s the gate to the dutch palace I hadn’t wanted to see in the first place! Aarrgghh! It’s one minute’s walk from the synagogue I was at. There was no sign of any elephants either so I have no idea about the name.

	Elephant gate – I see no pachyderms
	Synagogue clocktower from within the dutch palace

My final moments on this island were spent watching kids on a play-park (no, I am not Michael Jackson!) and talking with a family from Mumbai about life there compared to Worcester and St Andrews. The ferry took us, via WIllingdon Island, back to Ernakulam.

I then returned to the park and spoke to a park-keeper. He didn’t understand what I was saying (he thought I was in need of a toilet) and tried to wave me away with his lathi. A passer-by who had good english tried to help but the park keeper basically told me “tough: lots of people have been by since then” and walked off, ignoring my translator’s efforts to say ‘lost-property place?’. I’ll swear it was the same bloke who was no help this morning and I’m sadly reminded of ‘the parkie’ from Viz* and of the many other officious, unhelpful gits with which our species is littered. (Am I really turning into Victor Meldrew?)
*I looked for links to explain this character and found myself at white supremacist website. UGH!

	art in the park
	Kerala seems to be full of these lovely trees

Back to the hotel for a change and dumping some of the stuff, then out again in search of winXP and food. Found the latter at Bimbi’s, a ‘pure-veg’ fast-food joint offering ranges of India foods and veggie-burgers! You pay up front, then hand your receipt(s) across the appropriate counter (South Indian, North India, drinks, deserts) and a few minutes later get what you ordered. I’d ordered Keralan paratta curry and so only had to wait a couple of minutes for the paratta to cook. They were fine and the curry had a good taste but I found myself unable to life any of it but the sauce with my paratta. Perhaps I should have had some rice to make it more malleable: perhaps I should have noticed the cutlery tray across the room. (As far as I could see, everyone else in the room was eating with fingers.)

Finally I found a suitable cybercafe and spent a while uploading pictures….zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz

I arrived in Ernakulam this afternoon. It’s noticeably cooler than Ottapalam, presumably due to being on the coast. I walked from the station to the hotel I wanted to stay at, underestimating how far I went at times and so ending up on Jew Road. Yes, there’s an ancient Jewish settlement in Ernakulam/Kochi, according to my guidebook dating back to either the 11th century BC as part of King Solomon’s trading fleet or to refugees fleeing Nebuchadnezzar’s occupation of Jerusalem in 587 BC.

The main drag, MG Road, has a feel that combines Princes Street in Edinburgh with the mid-market bits of Birmingham city centre. I speak Malayalam about as well as I speak Brummie so I feel just as at home!

My hotel is in a fairly middle-class shopping area near the waterfront – handy for getting to old Cochi and booking stuff to do over the next few days. My room has a shower/toilet room, a wonderfully soft bed, a TV*, blessed relief from traffic noise and is completely clean. I wonder how long that will last with me in it. It’s Maple Guest House, XL/271 Cannonshed Road, Ernakulam, 0484235 5156.
* a mixed blessing. I’ve just been watching coverage of medical students protesting in major cities and a doctors’ strike. The student protests seem to be about a government decision to increases the number of places reserved for ‘Other Backward Classes’, according to the Times of India. I’d be interested in computerland opinions of such affirmative action: over to you

The Indian Railways website worked as far as getting to entering my credit card details. It then vanished into the dirac sea. I’m going to walk to the station and buy my ticket there.

One of the staff at my hotel told me last night that the Keralan election was won by a coalition of four left-wing parties. This ends the reign of another four-party coalition and so that coalition’s Chief Minister is about to resign. I wasn’t able to find out anything about the interregnum which was implied. However, each state apparently has a govenor, presumably appointed by central government for such reasons.

If I had been brought up in India and gone to school, I would probably know a lot more about India’s constitution. I’ve been told that it was written by Dr B Ambedkar. This explains the the many statues of him and things named after him. A quick read of the wikipedia article about him convinces me he’s well worth knowing more about.

Just in case you’re interested:

• election results
• official(?) election site
• few women elected
• elections in other states:
• Dr Ambedkar

Until yesterday, I would have described Ottapalam as a one-hourse town. On my way from the post-office, I saw it wasn’t a horse, but a donkey. The donkey had terrible welts on its shoulders and side.

We interrupt this blog to bring you the wikipedia articles – including cooking instructions – on idly and dosa!

I’ve finally made public the entries relating to travelling to Tamil Nadu and being taken around Salem:

1. family misfortunes
2. prologue
3. Travelling to Tamil Nadu (Friday 28th to Saturday 29th April)
4. Family Fortunes (Sunday April 30th)

and my description of Raju and Margaret Mary’s wedding: Nuptials! (Monday 1st May).

I’m still keeping private what happened in Mettur Dam that evening: unless I become sure that discussing it in a public document is absolutely the right thing to do, I won’t do so.

So far I’ve drafted my description of the day after the wedding and am about to start drafting my descriptions of the next two days.