Ow. A headache is not the best thing to have when writing an entry but I've taken my dosage of Ibuprofen and there's nothing more I can do about it. But on an exciting note I’m actually writing this entry instead of typing it (a first, I note) because I am using my mother's new tablet PC. On another downward note my brother’s being an ass right now and I can say that, in almost all situations, that is not too much fun (thankfully, his being-assy periods are usually only 16-20 hours long). So let’s see what this extremely discomforted head of mine can spew out as regards the experiences of the past week. On the twenty-sixth, we made our merry way to the domestic airport to catch a flight to Kochi. The flight was long but very bearable since I had with me my laptop - a trusty PowerBook G4 - and a spare battery for it, along with the first two seasons of the rather well-conceived television series “House”. The spare battery meant that, for all practical purposes, the playtime on that computer was ad infinitum. This ample viewing time meant that I’m now fairly addicted to this TV series, although, since there exist barely three seasons of it, and I’m not the kind of person who likes to wait a week between episodes, I don’t think I can properly feed my newfound addiction. Anyway, the flight was pleasant except for when we landed and found out that my Mama (my mother's brother) had had a myocardial infarction while we were airborne (an "MI" to us doctor kids but a "heart attack" to nearly everyone else). That was a quite distressing and we shortened our trip by a few days so that we could get to see him as soon as possible.
The General ImpressionWhen people talk about Kerala, they usually just heap a very liberal amount of praise on top of it, and so I was expecting a bit too much out of the place - like, God's own country or something. To be fair, the weather there is clement throughout the year and the people are really nice. The autowala wanted fifty rupees for a trip to some nearby place and back and we told him it was too much; but, we didn't actually haggle because we were short on time and so we sort-of just accepted his price. At the end of the ride, I handed him a fifty and he gave me a ten back; these people actually have consciences! That, and the food was really good. The place (once you get out of any major city) is incredibly green and beautiful. Going by road is the best way to commute, not because the traffic is good (more on that later), but because the scenery (especially when you cross bridges) is simply breathtaking.
The DrivingNow, here's the problem with traveling in Kerala - their roads are too good. At least for Indians. Like, they're all nicely mettled and everything, which basically means that everyone goes at a minimum 80kmph. Now add a minimum speed of 80kmph (everywhere!) to driving even worse than Delhi's (and that's saying something). What do you get? Something like the movie
Speed. Whenever we were traveling, I just tried to either fall asleep or concentrate on an episode of House because watching the road basically doubled my heart rate (did I mention that almost all the roads there are two-way?); and this is when I'm totally okay with Delhi driving. Those were some horrible road trips in which I simply didn't know whether it would be reasonable to assume that I was going to make it to the other end.
The Backwaters
Ah, the much-hyped backwaters of Kerala, which, mind you, if I hadn't visited, I would've been pounded on by a thousand annoying people-who've-been-to-Kerala as to how I missed this not-hidden treasure. Let me tell you the truth - it's shit. And all these people tell you it's good because they're sadistic morons who want you to suffer like they did. We were driven (in the Kerala way) for an hour to get to the village where they dump us into little canoe shaped boats for the ride through the backwaters. By the time I got into the boat, I already had a mild headache from the bus ride. Then, for the next hour, I enjoyed one of the most boring experiences in recent memory. We were in a boat, which was in a river-shaped water body approximately five metres in width, and they simply rowed and rowed and rowed in the most soporific manner ever for sixty excruciating minutes. No commentary, no nothing. The worst part? I couldn't fall asleep! The only thing on my mind was, "Wait, we have to go all this way back to the starting point, right? Because this backwater is not going to be conveniently circular in shape and deliver us back to where we began… although it'd be cool if it would… please…" After what seemed like a good approximation of forever, we reached the end, which was another little village; we saw some women make ropes out of coconut fibre, saw some people make mats out of dried wild pineapple leaves, bought some mats, and then sat again in that dreadful boat. Argh… another hour later we disembarked from that horrible little boat and another hour after
that, with my head throbbing painfully, we were back at the hotel. Wow, did that suck or what. Thankfully, ours was the half-day trip that was only about five hours in total. There's apparently also a full-day ten-hour trip, and I honestly fear for the sanity of those who go on it.
KochiWe went to a place called Mattancherry (pronounced as Mutton + Cherry) which is, as you might agree, an odd enough place name to begin with. It gets funnier though. It's apparently got the oldest synagogue in India or something, built in the 17th century. Know the name of the place where the synagogue is located? Jewtown. Yeah, Jewtown. We went to the synagogue. We found there the only Jewish person we saw in Jewtown and he was… uh, counting money. So amazing!
The entrance for the synagogue was Rs. 2 which was okay (if a bit too meager), but they made us take off our shoes before going inside, which was irritating. They even wanted our shoes off inside the church in Fort Kochi, by which time I was fed up of taking shoes off and simply didn't go inside the church. Screw the fact that Vasco De Gama was buried inside - I don't like grave-viewing too much anyway. Oh but here's something you should definitely visit when you're in Kochi - the Chinese Fishing Nets. They are amazing. You can Google for pictures I'm sure but they're worth seeing in real life, and according to the pamphlet, they've been there for a long-ish while, having been put there with the help of people from the court of Kublai Khan.
We also went to some mountains the next day but it was pathetic and not worth elucidating on. On the 29th, we flew back home and on the 30th, drove to Chandigarh to visit Mama. Mama is thankfully doing well. Now would be a really brilliant time for him to quit smoking. There is such a strong correlation between smoking and heart disease and being Indian and heart disease that smoking and being Indian at the same time gives you basically the same odds of having a natural death as a random person on the Titanic did. Don't smoke? Yeah, good idea.
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