Trivandrum
After saying goodbye to Chiang Mai, I started a 24-hour travel day: a quick flight to BKK followed by a six-hour layover, a 3-hour flight to Sri Lanka followed by a 9-hour layover (most of which was spent sleeping in an impressively uncomfortable position in airport lounge chair), then finally a short flight to Trivandrum. Getting out of the airport was a challenge as I had to wait to get my visa on arrival (a very recent program within India's immigration system), leave the airport building to use the only ATM, reenter the airport, break the large, effectively unusable bills dispensed by the aforementioned ATM, buy a SIM card, and get a taxi into town.
Buying a SIM card in India is a bit more difficult than other countries as it requires a passport photo and a lot of personal information, which I would soon learn is common practice throughout the country. After filling out the paperwork, paying, and putting the card in my phone, the woman behind the counter informed me that it wouldn't be activated for another 36 hours because it was Sunday. As I found out later that day, most of India shuts down on Sunday. With no working SIM card and no WiFi at my hostel, I walked around town desperately trying to find a telephone or Internet cafe so I could let Ayu know I arrived safely. After covering a lot of ground on foot in the mid-afternoon heat amid the incessant honking of traffic, I realized that almost every business in town was closed. Because... Sunday.
The only open Internet cafe was somehow both full and unstaffed, so I vowed to return later that evening after a much-needed nap, only to discover that the cafe closed two hours before they were supposed to. With literally no way to contact anyone and nothing to do in a provincial town in a strange place, I laid on my bed at the YMCA, sweating in the hot and muggy room, and watched the ceiling fan blades make their rounds for a while. I treated myself to some Indian soaps on TV before passing out for about eleven hours.
The next morning, the country was running normally again and I was able to use the Internet cafe to contact people and let them know I was alive and well. It wasn't the end of Indian bureaucracy though, as the rest of the day included another frustrating trip to the foreign registration office for Ayu and some excessive interrogations by hotel staff. In fact, the staff called up to the room multiple times and pestered us over the phone for inconsequential visa details and then demanded more money because two people (oh the horror!) were staying in the room.
Frustrations aside, Trivandrum felt like an authentic Indian city and I can count the number of Westerners I saw on one hand. I visited several local vegetarian restaurants and had some very cheap, very spicy, very delicious food. A satisfying veggie thali from a family restaurant cost fifty cents.
Varkala
After a day and a half in Trivandrum, it was time to head to the coast to the beach town of Varkala, a friendly, quiet holiday destination by the cliffs filled with the usual assortment of restaurants, bars, beachside resorts, ayurvedic massage, vegetarian food, hippies, EPL chicks, palm trees, auto rickshaws, and shops full of clothes and trinkets. When we weren't relaxing or sleeping at our excellent guesthouse (Om India Om), our time was pleasantly spent eating, reading, travel planning, walking the beach, swimming, and more eating.
While I was walking the beach early one morning, I came across several groups of local fishermen who were pulling in their nets from the sea. For a long while, they methodically and slowly pulled their heavy ropes from the ocean, coiling them neatly on the sand. They sang and chanted, both on land and in the water, as they worked. A few tourists, myself included, would stop, take a few photos, and watch for a little while before continuing on their morning walks. Reasonably fit Western men, again myself included, were recruited by the fishermen to help out for "just two minutes". Pulling those ropes is much, much harder than it looks; within a few minutes, I was wet with seawater and sweat, my arms were overworked, and my hands already felt chaffed. Just a short time with the fishermen was enough to make me appreciate how physically demanding their work is.
Kollam
After four peaceful days in Varkala, we took a taxi to Kollam for our overnight houseboat trip through the backwaters, a must-do activity for any tourist in Kerala. Our staff of three (captain, chef, and general assistant) took us to Ashtamudi Lake and then through many miles of the connected channels before docking for the evening. Most of our time was spent sitting in comfortable chairs on the upper deck, sipping masala chai, and watching the palm trees on the shore slowly pass by as the houseboat puttered along the quiet, empty canals. We'd occasionally pass other houseboats or fishing boats, but for the most part, the backwaters were free of traffic. We passed Chinese fishing nets, high-end hotels showing off their waterfront locations, simple homes and villages, trash fires, groups of young men practicing on musical instruments, children playing and screaming, and men in canoes running their daily errands.
Another major selling point of any houseboat cruise in Kerala is the food. Our personal chef cooked us three massive, amazing vegetarian meals, including many dishes I had never seen or tasted before. Sugar, rice, and chapati made their usual appearances, as they have in all the food we've had in southern India, but there were also welcome appearances of lentils, onions, carrots, pineapple, and coconut. Trying our hardest, we could eat only half of the excessive amount of food; though our taste buds were overjoyed, our stomach sizes were unfortunate limitations.
After the overnight, we enjoyed a delicious breakfast illuminated by the low, early-morning sun while the houseboat slowly made the short trip back to port.
After disembarking, we hired a taxi to take us to nearby Amritapuri, the ashram and birthplace of Amma, a female Hindu spiritual leader known for her marathon hug-bestowing sessions. We checked in and planned on staying the night before catching a train the next day, but changed our minds after a few hours. The ashram is quite the complex, perpetually filled with thousands of disciples and pilgrims and hippies, which was a bit overwhelming considering how limited the property boundaries are; I was expecting a college campus and instead found a high school. Or a prison. Actually, the comparison to a prison is not entirely unreasonable: the accommodations are small, dingy rooms with bars on the windows, everyone wears an identical outfit (all white), and lunch was a metal plate of bland food supplied by an assembly line of serving-spoon-wielding men standing behind massive pots containing watery, food-like mixtures.
After a few hours, we decided we had seen what we needed to see and changed our plans for the evening. I had just come down with a cold as well, so I wasn't feeling very excited about sleeping on the floor in a dirty room, negotiating large crowds, or trying to keep my energy up with bowls of slop. I think the elevator ride is the straw that broke the camel's back; every trip to or from our room in one of the highrise buildings was a lengthy, claustrophobic affair. Without fail, the elevator would stop at more than half of the ten floors separating us from ground level and someone would insist on trying to cram their body into an already packed metal closet.
As we were gathering our bags and leaving in the late afternoon, the cult-like vibe of the place became palpable as we heard snippets of conversations:
"Have you seen Mother yet?"Yikes.
"Are you going to see Mother today?"
"Mother is coming at 5:00."
We happily hired a car to take us back to Kollam, where we thoroughly (and I mean thoroughly) enjoyed the luxuries of aircon, a soft, fluffy bed, and an actual hot shower. Nurtured by a long night's sleep and an excellent dinner and breakfast from the hotel's rooftop restaurant, I felt my cold fading away.
(Side note: I've been very surprised at how little I've gotten sick - by which I mean catching a cold or the flu - while traveling for the last year and a half. And the two times I have gotten sick, I've recovered in only a few days, which is incredibly fast compared to my normal recovery time. My working theory is that no longer spending four or five days a week in a sealed office building with recycled germs is doing wonders for my health, but who knows if that's actually true.)
For the last week or so, we had been stressing a bit about our upcoming train trip from Kollam to Gokarna, another holiday beach town up the coast. Train travel is massive in India and no trip to the country is complete without at least one ride on the rails. However, demand greatly exceeds supply - at least in the high season - and so trains sell out weeks or months in advance. Also, given the number of routes, trains, classes, and ticket types, just buying a ticket can be an overwhelming and frustrating process for foreigners. After talking to a lot of people, trying in vain to buy tickets in person at the train station, and reading many websites, here's my advice to future train travelers of India: get an Indian SIM card for your phone and use Cleartrip (the website or the app) to view train schedules and make bookings.
We had booked a train that was already full, but our waitlist numbers were #3 and #4, which we were told were very promising. It's expected that some booked passengers will cancel their tickets the same day they are supposed to ride, so a low waitlist number stands a good chance of being bumped up to an assigned berth. I had been checking our waitlist numbers multiple times a day (via the app) and not seen any movement, but was able to stay calm by reminding myself that all the waitlist movement tends to happen in the last 24 hours before departure. And right on cue, three hours before our train was scheduled to leave, I received a flurry of texts and emails saying we were now officially ticketed passengers.
Our overnight train left at 8:00 pm, so the train station and platforms were already dark and sparsely populated with small groups of Indians. As trains arrived, waited for a few minutes, and left, people scurried on and off as food vendors sold their snacks and treats to passengers through the train windows. We climbed on one of the first-class cars and found our small, sterile room with two wall-mounted beds, one above the other. Shortly after setting our bags down, train employees stopped by to drop off pillows, sheets, blankets, water, and our dinners.
The train we booked had a minimal number of stops, so the ride was mostly smooth and pleasant, that is, once our neighbor finished watching his loud action movie and the neighbors on the other side stopped arguing about who had the wrong ticket and didn't belong there. I slept pretty well on my bed (which wasn't too short for me, as I was dreading) and got up in the morning with enough time to have breakfast and enjoy some daylight views of palm trees, hills, and lakes as the countryside flew by our window.
Gokarna
Upon arriving at the train station in Karwar, we hired a taxi to take us to Gokarna, about a one-hour drive away. The drive through the countryside was similar to the other taxi rides we had taken (more on that in a bit), but for the first time in India, we were witness to the concept of stray cows. A bit unnerving at first, the sight of lazily lumbering bovines interrupting traffic with their slow road-crossings and zero-fucks-given attitudes has since become quite normal.
While in Gokarna, another pleasant beach town with minimal crowds, we stayed on Om Beach, so named because it's shape resembles an Om symbol. It's by far the most popular and picturesque of the Gokarna beaches and the wave-less water is perfect for swimming. Unlike some other spots in India, Western and Indian tourists mingle freely; there's no weird beach segregation. Every day at about 5:30, dozens of people congregate on the middle part of the Om to grab a sundowner and watch the sun set over the rocks and the water. Similar to Varkala, we spent our time sunbathing, swimming, eating, and enjoying the beautiful views and weather.
Goa
After four sun-drenched days in Gokarna, we hired another taxi to take us to Vagator, Goa, about a four-hour drive. Now seems as good of a time as any to describe the inter-city roads that we've seen for many, many hours from the backseat of a number of taxis. I had mentally prepared myself for Indian traffic by thinking of Cambodia; in some ways, Indian traffic is not as bad and in other ways it's more chaotic. The roads and shoulders are filled with speeding cars, puttering auto rickshaws, motorbikes weaving in and out of traffic while carrying women in brightly colored dresses, screaming ambulances, smoke-belching buses built like tanks, and pedestrians navigating all of this as they cross the road in a real-life version of Frogger. Road markings might as well be nonexistent as any part of the pavement is fair game for passing at any speed and at any time. As we passed trash fires and felt our backs getting sweaty in the dry heat, we watched vehicles chaotically swerve around each other, avoiding accidents or dismemberment by mere inches.
And the honking! Honking has a much different use in India than it does in the West. Everything from passing to approaching an intersection to seeing a pedestrian results in a honk. It basically means "I exist". I honk, therefore I am. In fact, most trucks and auto rickshaws have a message on the back instructing drivers to "Please sound horn" or something similar. I've heard some very inventive horn noises as well, like the automobile manufacturer ripped out a small snippet of a high-bpm trance track, looped it, and cranked up the volume to an obnoxious level. Needless to say, with every driver constantly using one hand for steering and one hand for honking, the Doppler effect is alive and well and ubiquitous in India.
Once in Goa, we found ourselves overcome with the slow and tranquil pace of life; our 4-day stay very easily became a 12-day stay when we realized how delightfully lazy our days could be. Goa is quite touristy, so at times it didn't feel like we were in India. The Portuguese influence leads to interesting visuals; for instance, imagine a very Indian scene of green rice fields and a line of palm trees in the distance, then add a bright white church in the foreground. This is absolutely correct for Goa. The towns here have lots of great restaurants (mostly catering to Westerners), quite a few beaches (of varying quality), and trance or house parties every night. Lots of tourists fill their days with these activities alone, with a possible sprinkling of yoga or Pilates.
The Saturday night market, accessed by a clogged chokepoint of a small road, was a very crowded affair where tourists could get their fill of colorful textiles and clothes, teas and spices, carved wooden statues, bags, shoes, and jewelry. Ashvem Beach, arguably the nicest in the state, was full of sunbathing Russians on holiday, sipping drinks under their beach umbrellas. A typical trance party at Hilltop was full of India-partial Western travelers - no shortage of dreadlocks, bare feet, or body odor here - exhaling clouds of smoke and mindlessly shuffling their feet to the monotonous music.
Though the lazy days and beach and pool time were fantastic, I sought out a more philosophical or spiritual experience, something I figured I should have at least once while in India. The experience came in the form of Krrish, a spiritual guru in Calangute and also the uncle of one of my very good bay area friends. I went to Krrish's family's home one afternoon and we talked for hours over some lunch, cake, and, of course, several cups of masala chai. Krrish is a non-religious philosopher and guru and provides his clients with guidance on a variety of issues, from marriage problems to substance abuse to the meaning of life. After some small talk about travel and our mutual connection, we talked for a while about various perspectives of spirituality and his ideas and advice for what my next moves in life should be. It was a very productive conversation and Krrish's words have given me a lot to ponder. It was also a really good feeling to have some of my personally cultivated views on life validated by someone who spends most of his time thinking about such things.
Mumbai
After twelve lazy days in Goa, it was finally time to leave and catch our flight to Mumbai. We had initially planned on taking the train again until we realized that the flight was faster, cheaper, and more convenient, a rarity in the world of travel (or anything, really). After getting an auto rickshaw to Khar Station, walking through the neighborhood to our Airbnb, having an incredibly satisfying shopping experience at Santacruz Station, and eating a ridiculous feast for dinner, we felt like we were in real India again.
Before even arriving in India, I had reached out to Neha, a friend of mine from Riverbed who had moved back to India within the past few years. When I told her that we were thinking of traveling to Mumbai, she immediately invited us to her Indian wedding celebration, which was to be held on March 1st, the night before my 30-day tourist visa would expire! Ayu and I happily agreed to attend, so on the Friday afternoon before the party, we stopped by the family's beautiful home to see Neha, catch up, meet some of the family, and watch the women - Ayu included - get their henna.
Saturday was our only real sightseeing day in Mumbai, so we hired a taxi to take us to Colaba to see the Taj Mahal Palace and the Gateway to India. The rain started and stopped throughout the day, so traffic was worse than usual; we even saw a handful of accidents during the day, something we hadn't seen at any point anywhere in the country. Since the weather wasn't cooperating, we ended up having a very long (and overpriced) afternoon coffee and snack at the Taj Mahal Palace before embarking on another long taxi ride back to our place in Bandra West. One of the most interesting parts of the ride was driving along the waterfront - which reminded me of the Embarcadero in San Francisco - and watching all the couples on benches and groups of friends horsing around. Many of the couples were engaged in acts of PDA, which greatly offended my Indian sensibilities. Okay, okay, as an American, I wasn't offended, but as someone who's traveled a lot in Southeast Asia recently, I found myself slightly taken aback.
Also, Indians don't use umbrellas. Why? Why do that to yourselves? We have the technology!
We peppered our lazy Sunday with some last minute shopping for the wedding celebration until it was time to actually get ready and head out. The celebration was not a regular Indian wedding since the couple had "eloped" to San Francisco a month or so prior. This party was closer to a Western-style wedding reception for the enjoyment of the couples' friends and family in India. Over the course of the evening, we ate probably three meals' worth of delicious food, danced to dozens of Indian songs we don't know the words to, and drank half a dozen shots of (... shudder ...) Jager bombs out of a teapot that was forced into our faces by some of the waitstaff. How can I say no to hard alcohol poured directly into my mouth out of a teapot in India? I can't, which is why I blacked out for portions of the rest of the evening and had a phenomenal hangover the next day. Totally worth it though!
With a relatively minimal amount of Indian bureaucratic nuisances and (physically) pushy travelers, which were very much appreciated as we fought through the fog of our hangovers, we boarded our flights to Delhi and Kathmandu to start the next adventure: Nepal!
Full photo albums: Varkala, Kerala Houseboat, Henna
