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After a week of beach life in goa we strapped on our backpacks and continued south. We took a 6 hour train to Mangalore in Karnataka, just for one night to breakup the journeys. We'd read that there was less poverty in the south west provinces and people lived more comfortably and that was definitely apparent on the surface. In mangalore it had the feel of a thriving city, as oppose to Delhi and Jaipur which had the feeling the majority of its populace were surviving.
In the evening we went for a wander, and stumbled across an Indian sculpture park and then on the walk back to the hotel we walked past 1 screen cinema which was about to show the latest Bollywood blockbuster ( I think it was called 2j). After a bit of deliberation and despite several young blokes gawping and giggling at us we decided to go and watch. The film was in Hindi but the acting does break into a bit of English now and again so you can grasp what's going on. Just so I'm clear about one thing the film was terrible! But watching it made us realise that if one thing could perfectly sum up Indian social culture it's a typical Bollywood film, the theme being that Men are 1st and women are definitely 2nd. This particular films hero was a young chauvinist business man who could also fight 10 blokes simultaneously and win. His support actors 2 women who were portrayed as soft, helpless and insecure maidens. At one point the man we believe had near cheated on his fiancée, but she instantly forgave him when he bought ice cream! Then every so often the film breaks into the most camp music number I've ever seen complete with the whole cast dancing. To be honest it was that cheesy and ridiculous it was almost funny. We left after an hour but we were glad we tried it.
The next day we took the train to Kozikhode in Kerala, again only for a night. It was really warm and humid, I guess we've slowly been moving closer to the equator and its starting to tell. What was noticeable is how friendly the keralan people are, there wasn't an awful lot to do there but we went to a great sea food restaurant called paragon.
We got up early to take a bus to the Wayanad district of Kerala so we could take a safari to see wild elephants. The journey was 3 hours to a town called sulthan bathery. The wayanad district is in the western ghats which is a mountain range running inland down the Indian peninsula. The weather was noticeably cooler in our time there. The safari was great, we saw 11 wild elephants in total, 2 of which were little baby's. But not only that the park was ever so peaceful which gave us a really different feel to India, something probably many Indians never get to experience themselves.
These last 4 days since leaving Goa have been really different from everywhere else. We veered away from the main foreign tourist areas so not one tout tried to sell us something and neither has anyone tried to rip us off, ( in fact the rickshaw drivers in mangalore all used their meters so we didn't even have to haggle!) so it was pleasant to experience India in a more realistic manner.
Our next journey was another bus ride, this time further into the mountains to a hill station town called Ooty which we had high hopes for, but it didn't turn out so. Considering there has already been a slant of negativity earlier in this post, I'm going to skip over Ooty (save to say its an Indian Blackpool in summertime) and write about the bus ride there because that was fantastic. The journey was a winding 3 hour climb yet everywhere you looked the slopes were covered in tea, coffee and spice plantations; it doesn't sound much but it's a real spectacle. Each Tea plant appears immaculately kept, couple this with their vastness; the picture becomes a real treasure and you can appreciate the work that must go into these plantations (especially to an avid tea fan such as myself!)
After a train back to the western coast we're now in a town called Cochin. But I'll write about this next time, I'm already late with this latest post!
- comments
Carol Meldrum Hi Sinead & Andrew -Only just accessed your blog so we've sat all this morning reading all of them at once! You're obviously having a wonderful time and these memories will last forever! Keep your blogs coming and if they're all so descriptive we don't need to go to India to see it for ourselves! Take care. Carol & Richard (Newcastle)
jennifer Watts Managed to post a comment at last. The safari and seeing the elephants in the wild sounds fantastic. You seem to be having a whale of a time (excluding the Blackpool of India). The bus journey into the hills and seeing the tea plantations etc. sounds amazing - hope you've taken plenty of photos. Can't believe you went to watch a Bollywood film though - what an experience!!! I think you'll have moved on by now so look forward to reading your next blog. Take care of yourselves and continue to have a great time. Lmdx