Yesterday was not fun, what with, umm, stomach issues, on the train yesterday (at least the toilet was pretty clean on the train, being in one of the better classes).
I arrived in Margao (Madgaon), the main train station town in Goa, in mid-afternoon exhausted and not feeling well.
So instead of 2 auto-rickshaws and 2 buses up to Arambol beach, I took the fastest route to a beach, which was a 10-15min auto-rickshaw ride to nearby Benaulim Beach (only 6-8km away from Margao).
I slogged along the beach to find a room at the beach huts, and the 3rd or 4th one did have one available (albeit with the tiles ripped out of the bathroom for renovation).
I drank 1L water with oral rehydration salts, took a brief swim, huddled on the padded lounge chair (free!) to watch sunset, and then slept off and on until the next morning (no dinner).
Today my stomach feels better. I had an exciting porridge breakfast (mmm), and a slightly more substantial lunch.
I was going to try to move to Arambol today, but it turns out check-out is at noon (not 24 hours from check-in) so I am staying another day (which is also safer, methinks).
The beach here is very wide, with light rolling waves and a good breeze. Lots of restos on the beach, but spread out enough to not be manic.
This is the main part of Benaulim beach (my bungalows/hotel is a 5 minute walk north of here, where it’s a little quieter)
In these first 18 days, I think I’ve experienced just about all the main transportation modes except for boats and internal flights. No camels yet either.
In increasing order of size/cost:
There was no night train from Hampi. I should have considered the night sleeper bus (apparently you get a sleepable bunk – not reclining seats). Then again, The Book says to avoid night buses. Then again, I’ve met plenty of travelers who like them.
In the meantime, some more Hampi photos:
– the river, with laundry drying, looking from my side (Hampi Bazaar) towards the calmer other side (there’s a small boat crossing)
– giving a monkey a drink (yes, that’s my hand); the cap on the water bottle is loose so that it dripped (one monkey later bit a hole near the bottom of the bottle, so I closed the cap and used that as the water “spout”
Unfortunately, I had brought the wrong spare SD card (memory) for the camera and had no space half-way through the feeding frenzy (I had nuts and bananas for them too). Part of that problem was that I had organized the photos by location in a separate folder, so when I popped the card in it said no photos to display and I assumed it was empty, instead of checking that there was room for 500+ photos…
Communicating in English: Note: there is a movement in India to make Hindi the official country-wide unifying language, but south India is resisting the idea because English is the common second language – hardly anyone speaks Hindi in the south. Recall that virtually every state (certainly in the south) has its own language (a Dravidian language in the south, which is very different from Hindi).
Alleppey and backwaters:
In the backwaters village homestay, Thomas’ mother did the (excellent) cooking. She also gave cooking classes (no time for me though).
Tip: skip the night in Alleppey and head straight for Chennamkary village homestay!
Including this mother with baby – so cute! Had to include this pic for Susan!
Apparently the mother’s very red face means she is ready for to mate again…
They may be wild, but they are definitely used to humans – they will take bananas and nuts (one at a time, stuffing their cheek) out of your hand, and drink water from a loose-capped water bottle (one actually managed to twist the cap off) or from a half-coconut shell, even tipping it up like a cup!
I didn’t do any of that direct interaction (other guys did), but I’m heading up there again today with supplies!
Oh, and one of them kept touching my back while I was crouched taking photos and videos – they’d definitely get into a backpack or bag if you left it lying on the ground…
Monkey with baby on board
On an unrelated note, I was recently asked: How are you finding communicating in India? How common is English?
A: English is quite common (less so in smaller towns, but people who deal with tourists speak English, except for the canoe paddlers out of Alleppey
That being said, their English is hard to understand due to to the strong Indian accent (think Apu on The Simpsons but even stronger) – I frequently have to ask What? and Sorry? to get them to repeat it…
An exception of course is better- or foreign-educated Indians, their English is very understandable. Note: there is a movement in India to make Hindi the official country-wide unifying language, but south India is resisting the idea because English is the common second language – hardly anyone speaks Hindi in the south. Recall that virtually every state (certainly in the south) has its own language (a Dravidian language in the south, which is very different from Hindi).
Pronounced HUMpee, this magical area (a World Heritage site) is full of hundreds of temples and granite boulders. Peaceful, relaxing. I can see why people say this is a can’t-miss-place (#2 after Varanasi)
I lost my buff in Mysore 2 days ago, so I have to wear my geeky safari hat – though it does protect my ears and nose Behind me is the 50m gopuram (entry tower) of the 16th Century temple in one of the 2 main temple areas of Hampi (the one with the bazaar, hotels, restos and tourists).
On the right is a little temple on the hill, surrounded by granite boulders.
Little temple on granite boulder strewn hill
Jan in dorky hat with gopuram
Would you believe I wasn’t able to find a usable Internet cafe in Bangalore, in the tourist area of MG Road?
I found one nice modern a/c one, but they required a minimum 7hr package for Rs270/$6.25. I only saw 2 places: one closed in my face at 20:30, and the other was brutally warm and had old-looking computers. This, despite being the IT centre of India, and the guidebook saying there are fast Internet cafes everywhere.
Sorry guys, but I was unimpressed with Bangalore: modern, clean, green (as in parks), expensive, somewhat un-Indian. The MG Road area could have been in almost any city (even a KFC and McDonald’s there). But uninteresting.
Alappuzha (Alleppey) was nothing exciting in and of itself, it’s more of a gateway to the backwaters. It sits roughly in the middle of the at least 120km long (north to south) stretch of backwaters; I’m not sure how wide it is (though it is wide too). Basically the area goes from Kochi (Cochin) at the north end all the way Kollam in the south (which is just north of Varkala). It’s so large that we actually travelled on “national waterway no. 3″ for part of the ferry ride! And there are canal-side signs showing direction and distance to towns, just like highway signs!
Popular cheap backwater cruises include: Kollam to Alleppey (8 hours by public ferry; the guidebook says this can get boring, but a few travellers I’ve met say it was interesting, what with all the village stops along the way) and the public ferry from Alleppey to Kottayam (2 1/2 hours), which is east of Alleppey and has more frequent trains to Kochi.
There are recommended half or full day tours out of Kollam, Alleppey and Ernakulam (the mainland part of Kochi, which is where the train station is).
You can rent houseboats designed like a kettuvallam (rice barge) which come in a range of sizes and luxuries; all of them are relatively expensive.
These 2 pictures are from the canoe ride I did out of Alleppey with Annerose:
Village in canoe going past a simple houseKids walking along riverbank
The highlight for me, though, was doing a 2 night backwater village homestay. As the guidebook puts it, “set in a typical and ridiculously picturesque backwater village.”
The erudite Thomas, who spoke great English, had homestays in his house and his sister’s newer house next door, plus “overflow” of sorts in a group of 10 or so other villagers’ houses.
The home-cooked food was very good (Thomas’ mother did the cooking), with the 2 lunches being spectacularly tasty!
The cost for a single was Rs750/$18.75 in the older home (which I took), or Rs1000/$25 in the newer home, including all meals and cold bottles of purified rain water.
The village itself, on the island/village of Chennamkary, was a 1 1/4 hour ferry ride (Rs5/$0.13) from Alleppey. Actually, Chennamkary is an almost circular island that is 30km in circumference, with a population of 4,000. However, most of the land in the centre of the island is rice paddies (at 1m below sea level), leaving really only a narrow band of solid land (100m wide or less) along the island edge for houses.
I walked in the village, rented a bike to explore the island further, and we hired a motorized boat for a 3 hour sunset cruise. Thomas’ mother also gave cooking classes (no time for me though).
One night we even took a canoe ferry across the canal to the mainland (although it looks like another island) and an auto-rickshaw to a temple to watch a Kathakali, a traditional Keralan dramatized play performance, with a green-faced actor accompanied by a few other actors and drummers and singers. The main character uses mainly mudras(hand gestures) and facial expressions. Here is the main Kathakali character, who has the divine power of always telling the truth:
Kathakali character
Misc notes about Kerala, which is an understandably proud province:
highest literacy rate in India (and if treated as a country, one of the highest literacy rates in the developing world!)
lots of schools, and lots of kids in school
little poverty (and few very rich people)
state govt has put money/effort into land reform and infrastructure
state govt is the communist party but democratic
See also previous posts on Alleppey and backwaters…
Tip: skip the night in Alleppey and head straight for Chennamkary village homestay!
These were added in place in the original posts as italicized updates, but I’m putting them here for those of you reading regularly:
Kanyakumari: I forgot to mention that at the memorial there is a darkened meditation room with a glowing Om symbol and a recorded Om sound that plays every 30 seconds or soo. Very relaxing.
Alleppey: I forgot to mention that on the train was also a 22 year old Finnish girl who had just married a local Indian boy in Varkala!
brief Alleppey and Fort Cochin posts: I added one photo to each of these posts (one has an elderly woman and grandchild, the other has the trio from Hong Kong), so scroll down or click on “Older posts”!
