the big trip: 2008

So, about 5 weeks ago, we left the silk and sandalwood centre of Mysore in Tamil Nadu. We travelled in a'mini bus' that got a road side blessing by a hairy,half naked Sadhu before we set out, to the hill town of Ooty high in the Western Ghats. We shared the journey with South Indians and no Westerners which made a change. It seems that we had taken the only twoseats left on what was a tour bus for well healed Indians that were tourists in their own country but from another state and where taking a day trip toOoty. We made good time (as all Indian buses seem to,probably due to their hair raising speed and willingness to over take anything without hesitation)and began the steep hill climb up the Western Ghats. (the range of mountains that separate South Central India from its South West coast) This took at least an hour in first and second gear only,negotiating over twenty hairpin bends on the way. But the climb was a picturesque one and took us through green terraced tea plantations ( this part of theWestern Ghats, known as the Nilgiri Blue mountains, is known for its tea and their best is called Orange Pekoe which I was told does not taste of oranges so it must be something to do with the colour?)The higher we climbed the cooler the air became and the trees were more frequently pine and fir instead of the bamboo and coconut palm that we were leaving behind. We had high hopes for Ooty (once known as Snooty Ooty)as it was an old hill station from the turn of the century where well to do Colonials would hob nob with the Rajah of Mysore who had his summer palace their complete with guest house in its own grounds. Added to this were the comments of an incense and oil merchant we had met in Mysore who had told us that he visited Ooty regularly and that he found it very romantic. Sadly, Ooty was an armpit and generally a disappointment. Dirty, dusty with open sewers flowing with raw sewage, bad roads and run down shop fronts. An amusement park seemed to form the hub ofentertainment for the many coach loads of Indian tourists (who vastly outnumbered the Western ones) whoa rrived daily. 'Jollyworld' as it was called, was about as jolly as a bare knuckle fist fight and had,at its entrance gate, a boy in a pink gorilla suit so dirty and matted that you wanted to cross the road to get away from it. Staring in wonder through gaps inthe rusty sheet metal fence we witnessed Jollyworlds two main attractions. Beyond the sewage filtration tank just next to the ticket office (I kid you not) was the go-cart track complete with burnt out go cart in the middle and if that wasn't enough to get the pulse racing you had the Titanic bouncy castle to contend with, half deflated and so covered in dirt that you could have caught dysentery just by looking at it for too long. Our guest house was cheap and looked out across the road and onto the lake that was built by the colonial English in Ooty's golden years, probably to pass the time punting around, drinking gin and generally pretending that they were back in England. The lake is now used to pump the towns untreated sewage into which probably accounts for the clouds of flies that make the town their home. Ooty did have some redeeming features though, the constantly friendly and enthusiastic residents and the frenetic buzz that is India's daily life even in a small, dirty out of the way hill town. Having a good look around a new place usually brings some reward and in Ooty it was the bazaar. Not a market for tourists but a proper one for locals. We spent quite some time nosing around and picked up some bits including two excellent and brightly printed rice bag type hold alls that we are using for beach bags at the moment. Outrageously cheap and might last a lifetime. The other highlight was taking late breakfast on the lawns at the Rajah of Mysore's guesthouse, a rather tired looking elongated bungalow that had, lining the walls inside, large black and white photos of the Raja himself with his summer guests playing polo, hunting etc. After breakfast we took a look at the summer palace itself with an old soldier who was clearly rather proud to be on reception at the old place and had his informative, if difficult to follow patter well rehearsed.Inside were more photos showing the Rajahs 250Kg solid Indian gold throne that even had solid gold steps that led up to it. I definitely need one of those. The ornate ceiling in the main hall was a delight and the walls were panelled in 150 year old Indian teak. The building had recently been renovated using government money and was now available for functions and private rental of the rooms including the Rajahs own suite. The renovations weren't great but the real travesty was that central heating had been installed, besides the damage that this would do to all the panelling and incredibly ornate wood carvings in the main hall by drying it out, large white flat panel radiators had been bolted into the teak panels and the pipework ran around the skirting and even across the hearth of the great stone fireplaces. The installers had not seen fit to hide the pipes at all.The National Trust would have had forty fits. We managed to kill 2 days and 3 nights in Ooty and on the 4th of Feb we escaped on the Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway. An antique from the beginning of the 20thCentury. It was tipped to be a unique experience and indeed it was.The Nilgiri steam train runs on a narrow gauge track and has carriages at least half as wide as the regular coaches that we have travelled on everywhere Else.Because it ascends and descends at quite a steep angle it uses the Swiss rack system with a toothed rail set next to the regular one so it can climb easily or control its speed on the way down. It runs from Ooty downhill through 16 tunnels, 11 stations and under 19 bridges. Due to the smaller carriages we were packed in very tightly and bags were squeezed in to the narrow isle between the seats. The Indian tourists were savvy enough to have not brought any luggage, and being daytrippers they had no need to, however all the 'nonresidents' (who incidentally had all been sold tickets for the same carriage I think less of a coincidence and more likely for amusement) were mostly carrying all their stuff with them. So whilst the Indians sang,joked and generally made merry while the train chugged downward through the picturesque mountains, the rest of us were pinned in place by our luggage and struggled to keep the blood moving for the five hour(mostly at walking pace)descent. We arrived at Coimbatore in the evening and found a cheap room near the station for the night. We got up early the next morning to get tickets for the Hyderabad-Trivandrum Sabari Express that would take usin the relative luxury of second class for the 8 hours to Varkala in Kerala which is where we stayed for longer than we expected. We stopped in Varkala for just about three weeks and had a very decent detached cottage in a small complex amongst palm trees and set just off the beach. We were at the quiet (for India) end of things away from the tourist enclave of North cliff where the package tourists and weekend hippies reside. There was a great view of the Arabian sea from the small terrace which was perfect for watching the lights of the local fishing boats collect on the horizon at dusk.It was really rather pleasant. Varkala itself was not big and a kind of younger brother to the much more 'popular' Kovalam about an hours train journey South along the coast. Varlkala, like so many of the places we have visited has a strong cultural identity and is a popular spiritual destination for South Indians. They come to wash themselves in the temple tank that is fed by a spring next to the temple itself that is very very old. Barely a day passes here without some form of exotic and peculiar religious activity frequently accompanied by extremely loud fireworks that could easily be mistaken for the outbreak of war. Devout worship is a daily occurrence for many and adherence to traditional practices such as bringing offerings of food and garlands of flowers (sold on virtually every street and at every market we have been to throughout South India) is the core of this. We mostly ate at the local 'meals ready' place that serve the real thalis on banana leaf with home made pickles and chutneys and proper veg and non-veg curries with flat bread called parotha to mop up the gravy. If we were feeling hungry we would both order a meal it set us back around 60 Rupees which is less than a pound. This obviously appealed to the skinflint in us. We learnt how to eat properly with fingers (right hand only as the left is considered unclean, and utilising all four fingers as well as thumb is customary although this technique varies from state to state as does pretty much everything else) and have found it a very liberating experience after all the years of being told not too! We had to put in the practice partly out of necessity as we had no knives or forks but mainly as were lucky enough to have been graciously invited to eat with Indian families at their houses on two occasions. Emma has a spookily natural ability and I am getting there and despite ending meals looking like someone has thrown food over me, I think our hosts appreciated the gesture though. We became rather comfortable in Varkala despite our initial opinion that it was too commercial and as I mentioned, stayed longer than we had planned. Since then we took a train to Quilon (Kollam) where we stayed in a government guesthouse that could best be described as a prison cell except you were given the key. The ceiling was falling in, the window frames were falling out and the heat and humdity was so unbearable in the night that I had to sleep outside.By the second night we had been bitten so badly by bedbugs and mosquitos that Emma slept on the granite floor, we counted over fifty bites between us and two of my fingers swelled up. The only benefit of staying at this place was that it sat at the head of the Kuttanad backwaters where the rice boats and ferries set off for other destinations further North. Our next move was an all day ferry journey along the backwaters of Kerala further North to Alleppy where we spent a couple of nights in the back garden of an appalling homestay called Johnsons nest that was only missing the word 'rats' from its name. From there we took another ferry to Kottayam and got on a bus to Kumily that made the Spitfire look like modern technology. I took note of the fact that the acelerator and clutch pedals had been worn down to shiny nubbins but the brake pedal was so untouched that you could still clearly read the manufacturers name on the rubber cover, hardly surprising then that the brake lights on the buses are so rarely used that they have no bulbs in and are painted red for effect.Further evidence of special driving technique and the supremacy on the road that bus drivers have over any other vehicle, including the police, can be found in the lack of any indicators what so ever and their replacement on the steering column with two levers that activate airhorns loud enough to make you cry and wet yourself in that order. This journey took us backup into the hills. The six hour uphill journey was only broken by two short stops at bus stations on the way, one of which gave rise to one of my favourite exchanges that I have had with a shopkeeper since we have been in India, it went something like this:

Namaste, how much are the bananas?

Twenty Rupees.

Twenty Ruppees each? thats expensive.

Yes sir. Twenty rupees each.

Okay then, I'll take four bananas.

Okay sir, four bananas.

after this simple but relatively coherant exchange the shopkeeper mumbled something about a quarter of a kilo, gave me three bananas wrapped in newspaper and asked for ten Rupees. Priceless.

Emma is coming through a second stomach bug (Giardia this time I think) I suffered for a day or two with the hot jets but it has lessened to theoccaissional stomach cramp. Ive purposely avoided antibiotics (although they are so easy to pick up its ridiculous) as they can be as devestating to the gutas the bacteria itself but I would not hesitate if it was a bad dose Emma has been taking them though, as she has had it a lot worse bless her and I reckon her immunity may have been weakened due to her last bout of amoebic dysentry less than 6 weeks ago. Were getting pretty good at spotting the symptoms and diagnosing the illness (although this is rarely a pleasent experience) and we now carry more drugs than a doctor.

It was Emmas birthday last Tuesday. We booked into a rather lovely, luxury hotel called Green wood Hotel which is up in the hills of Kumily in Kerala and near the suprisingly beautiful Periyar Wild lifereserve(Elephants, Deer, Monkeys, Bison and even a large population of very elusive Tigers)We were going to go for a trek while we were there but that is when Emma caught herself another rather vigorous stomach bug and was laid up for most of the time we spent there. Funny really as we agreed that to make it worthwhile paying for a decent hotel, we would want to take some time off travelling for a few days spend a decent amount of time enjoying the facilities and not just sleeping there, well we made good use of room service and the bathroom was much more condusive to spending long periods of time in than most we have had the pleasure of. It hasnt been as nasty as last time although I did take the precaution of using the hotels doctor on call who wasted no time in injecting Emma with 50ml of mystery fluid before I had a chance to ask her what it was. Not much fun for Emma especially on her birthday.

The hotel staff had organised a cake and a candle lit table by the pool and even fireworks can you believe,unfortunately food was out of the question at the time and we decided that the shock of fireworks were likely to bring on the wrong kind of result altogether. We came down from our luxury hotel/hospital in Kumily about 5 days ago on a six hour, 180k bus journey which was very picturesque and far less hair raising than the journey up. Passing through small hill towns untill we reached the stiffeling heat back at sea level at Cochin. We were both a little short tempered but hardly surprising seeing as we had left our five star comfort, both with bad stomachs, and re-aquainted ourselves with the world of 6 pound a night guesthouses. Incidentally we were moved out of theplace we had booked in Cochin to a sister guesthouse on our second night as the cess pit had filled up and was sending jets of poo out into the courtyard outside our window but despite that we were both feeling better and just killing time untill we took a rickshaw to the train station where we took the red eye 1st class to Mangalore. And where we currently reside, perspiring but happy and ready for Africa. We have been in close contact with the organisers of our overland trip and they assure us that the situation in Nairobi is safe and that the overland team are all meeting there as arranged. I have booked the hotel there and we are pretty much all ready to go. Despite the difficulties of preparing to travel one third world country while based in another, we have got organised and stocked up with plenty of medicines from the very informed and helpfull street pharmacies that will handover anti biotics at the drop of a hat without prescription and for virtually nothing. Interestingly the last pharmacist that I spoke to, back in Kumily,had been a nurse for 35 years and had been working as a government nurse in Zambia for 6 years! She confirmed that it would be very difficult to get any drugs in Africa without prescription and even then they might not be available. But then she would, its all business.