South India, Part 3

We left Goa and headed down south to the tropical state of Kerala. The first stop was Kochi, I particularly liked it here because the sea food came in huge portions and was so cheap. We could choose any type of fish caught that day at the local market and the restaurants would cook it for about 60p. The amount of jumbo prawns and lobster we were eating in one meal was disgusting. There were some giant fishing nets the locals use from the beach that made a pretty good photo in the sunset, when I took the photo I realized a dead dog had washed up right by my feet, how pleasant. Whist in Kochi we rented a motorbike again and drove inland about 40 miles to an elephant training centre, here we washed elephants using a half coconut shell and the river water, it really was such an experience, one elephant grabbed my arm with its trunk and I swear tried to break it, they were very friendly on the whole though. We continued our journey on the bike to a place called Anthrepelly where there was a stunning waterfall, there was a Bollywood film crew using the waterfall as the background so were waiting ages before we could swim in it. I admit driving the motor bike was pretty scary as the other road users are mentalists there are virtually no rules and it was often pouring down with rain we had a few near misses.

We caught a bus inland to the hills a place called Munnar in the western ghats where it was raining all the time, but so much cooler. Munnar is a scruffy agglormation of corrugated iron roof cottages, there are tea plantations everywhere and Indians in the fields collecting the leaves which makes a great photo, the landscape was the strongest colour of green scenery I have ever seen.

About 10 km from Munnar lies the Chinnar valley national park which is home to tigers elephants and many more animals. When we arrived at Chinnar we got off at the wrong stop because the bus driver forgot two foreigners were on board, we had to get off in a remote village where know one seemed to want to speak to us and had to hitch a lift back to our stop. Once we eventually did arrived at the entrance we paid for a three hour trek into the reserve. When we entered our guide 'an Indian man' had a small bamboo stick in his had, 'I thought what the bloody hell is he gonna do with that if a tiger attacks us' where's the gun? It just seemed so dangerous and Gary was wearing red so they would definitely be after him. As it happed we didn't see any tigers or anything else for that matter not even a snake or spider the most we got for the three hours of midday sun and a 10km walk was a quick glimpse of a deer, joy!! We did find it quite amusing though.

We headed to Kumily further south to another wild life sanctuary determined to see a tiger in the wild. When our bus came we ran across the road to get on, although it is virtually free, I really should explain how important it is to be the first on a bus in India because if you don't get a seat you really could be standing up for 4 hours in the heat, its not pleasant as I experienced for 90 minutes on one journey. Once on they squeezed my rucksack behind the drivers seat to fit more people in the bus and in doing so they ripped it! I was pissed about that. Periyar wildlife sanctuary was suppose to be the most popular wild life reserve in India and we could walk from our guest house to the sanctuary it was a 4km walk. On the way we did see a Sandal tree and some rather large green spiders I managed to get a picture without being attacked.

The trip around the reserve was viewed by boat from a lake in the centre of the reserve, the lake was extraordinary there were dead trees rising from the lake at different heights, I called it the river sticks. We saw bison, wild bore, lots of birds and even some wild dogs but not tigers, or elephants, bummer!!

Whilst in Kerala it would have been rude not to have one of there traditional Ayurveda massages. We paid about 500 rupees which was a days budget about 7 pounds for 70 minuets, it was quite humorous they asked me to strip naked and then gave me the tiniest piece of cloth to cover my privates and then the a bit of string to tie it on, then proceeded in pouring ayurveda oil on me and forcing the blood the ends of my arms and legs then clicking my fingers and toes, quite a strange experience and will be interesting to compare massages from the other countries that I'm heading too. One of the main produce in this area besides tea is Cocoa beansand Coffeebeansand because whenever we order milky tea we often have to pay for a whole glass of hot milk so if I bought some coco powder. I could make hot chocolate and it did worked well until I got sick of separating the lumps that accumulated. Anyhow I was drinking my hot coco and a noise can from down the street it sounded like a riot but was just another parade of protestors chanting.

We left the cooler region of the Western Ghats and travelled back to the coast to a place called Alappuzha. When we arrive the touts were particularly bad surrounding us and dragging us into space to sell us there guest houses.

We took a boat trip to see the backwaters which were incredible there were many villages spread out along the narrow pieces of land which split the many lagoons. There were labyrinths of narrow canals overcast with trees it looked spectacular our boat couldn't fit down them which was a shame. We stopped on an island and enjoyed a few glasses of coconut beer which was although warm quite refreshing especially when you down the lot in one go, without dribbling !!

After Alapez we headed to Varkala a cliff side village with a beach and a hippy reputation like Goa it was off season and was dead. When wegot there in the middle of the night it pick black because there was no street lights, nothing!! I swear if we hadn't of had those headlights we wouldn't of had a bed for the night. The food however was good but even though I asked for no nuts in my biriani and got the manager out to explain to him as well so they did understand, it still came with nuts in, however despite having to pick them out one by one its was the tastiest biryani I had in India so far. I had been growing a rather hideous borderline ginger beard at this stage and had decided to get him chopped off the Indian guy was very amused with my cleft chin (yes ok bum chin).

We met a couple of English girls who were working in varinassi (where we are planning to go) who invited us to stay with them after we smuggled a bottle of vodka into there resort and then were chased out by some angry Indian men. The book shop was good here and managed to trade some of my books and got a book called Shantaram which is 1000 pages long but there is much reading time in this vast country. At this stage we calculated that to be in Calcutta for when our plane departs we're not going to have enough time to go to everywhere we wanted also that we need to book all our train tickets now, I think after we had booked them a trip that would have been equivalent in distance as London to Lisbon was 26 pounds. But I swear these ticket guys plan your trip for you and if you just tell them your ultimate destination you end up going via Mumbai and Kashmir so I broke it down and found one route myself which saved us a lot of time. Apparently there is a reserved number of tickets for foreign tourists which aren't sold till the final 6 hours which helped with many of our tickets.

The next city we hit was Trivandrum right near the southern tip where the food especially the ice cream was unbelievably cheap. Here is where we had many Saja try this: a litre of frozen milk cashew nuts couple of spoons of horlix and a table spoon of sugar in a blender, although your teeth hurt for hours after drinking its worth it (I obviously had it without the nuts) herewe also went to the cinema and saw 'Ongbak 2' the cinema was just like the Ritz in Gosport for those of you who were lucky enough to have been there.

I really felt Indian train stations were eerie places everybody staring at you and you kind of have to sleep or wait with your back to the wall or floor clutching your rucksack. I always found myself wondering why Indian people would come and sit right next too you and stare so much I often found they were watching my every move.

In Trivandrum we went to the zoo and saw some tigers yes they were in cages but at least we could see them, we also saw some very strange looking crocodiles there is some photos up see what you think of these weird things.

On the train to Madras our next destination in Tamil Nadu on the south east coast the Indian men sleeping below us performed a Hindu ritual the puja we were quite interested until it got annoying they had to light a small fire in a pan and the fumes really got to us, imagine lighting a small fire on a train at home. When we arrived we discovered our lonely planet guide was not complete the madras section had been removed (we had a second hand copy) we didn't actually realize how much you really depend on that book until you arrive in a city and don't have it. We were as good as lost and India is a dirty country so dirty you really do have to sterilise your hand before you eat a meal but madras that was one of the worst. We were lost without a guide book we walked along a small river quite central to the city and the smell was so bad I struggled not to be sick the water was black like oil and we were walking with this smell for at least a half hour. It was so hot and we couldn't find anywhere to eat or stay in the end we decided it was such a horrendous city decided to get back on the train and give this place a miss.

We went straight to Bengalore which we loved there were some western style restaurants, we immediately had the biggest steak with 2 fried eggs on top, I need to emphasise how good this was as we had been living on rice and curry for breakfast lunch and dinner. Unfortunately we had booked our trains so had to leave without a night on the town. North of Bengalore was Hampi a world heritage site scattered with old Hindu temples and ruins it was quite spectacular but apart form viewing these temples there wasn't much there to do apart from try to bear the heat. However there was an interesting electric storm and I managed to catch a bolt of fork lightning on my camera over thehorizon.

We had to get to Varrinassi then on to Calcutta for are flight to Bangkok this meant 2 nights and 3 days in a train, we new this was going to be hell becauseit wasn't an air-conditioned train, I think in the end are expectations were so terrible that we thought it was not to bad in the end. We met many different Indians and just read books was a weird experience.

Varinassi was a crazy place even for India I can't explain it in words you just have to go there. When we arrived it was early so to save time we visited the Ghats along the river Ganges. I was tired and once we arrived at the ghats I found myself in the searing heat stood on a mound of ash there was an Indian tout chatting away. In front of me there was 2 burning bodies one of which I could actually see some of the flesh burning, the smell was horrendous and to make it worse there was a dog chewing on a hip bone to my right, in the river there were some kids swimming around looking for jewellery. Then this Indian holy man demands money off us to buy wood for the cremations. According to the lonely planet the water in the Ganges is 500 times too dirty to bath in and the Hindu people believe they should drink it to have there sins replenished, so disease is a real problem here. We did the sunrise boat trip along the river and saw thousands of people along the ghats bathing and performing there ritual, many other back packers we met saw dead bodies floating in the river but fortunately we did not.

The girls we had previously met in Kerala we working here so we decided to meet up with them when we did they persuaded us to do some charity work and help them paint a children's school. The school was quite far so we found a rickshaw man and both squeezed into the small wooden seat, it really was a squeeze anyway this Indian man must have been between 65 and 75 years old, he cycled us in the midday heat for about 40 minuets, if it got to steep he would walk us. We felt so guilty we must of only been moving at walking speed the whole way we were so heavy. Anyway when we got to the school he asked for 20 rupees which was about 12p each that's how poor people are in India we gave him a generous tip. Painting the school was interesting the staff there really didn't seem to do much maintained even when they had nothing to do, however there were very grateful.

Calcutta was an interesting city so busy and so polluted. It took us ages to find accommodation here because the pages in our guide book were missing, we tried to take photo's of the appropriate pages of a new lonely planet but left creases and had to pay a some hysterical Indian. we had a room with a TV so made use of that watching 'star movies', and that's when we herd them talking on the news about Michael Jackson's funeral we thought we had miss heard the TV what a shock.

The flight with Jet airways was ok, Gary didn't try to bring his knife through customs this time.My TV screen didn't work for half the trip so only got to see half the film I was watching however did get my 2 free double whisky cokes they keep those nerves at bay and the food was great curry for the 500th time. When we landed in Bangkok a tire bust and we veered off the runway...not really it was a safe landing.

See photo's,South India