The Greg and Tanya live Tour

Traveling with Greg (or any white person) in India is quite an experience because everyone treats us as if were celebrities, this happens pretty much everywhere but particular during our adventures in Fort Kochin.

Fort Kochin itself is lovely town, you have to approach it by ferry and it does feel like a different little world. The town has had a strong Portuguese influence and many lovely buildings line the streets, pascal yellow and aqua with ornate white finishings. Although set up very much for tourists it still functions as any other normal town with Indians mixing freely with the travelers. We stayed in a beautiful old family house built in the Portuguese style, opposite a large sports field where dusk to down, every sport known to man was either practiced or played.

Kochin being a relatively small place is quite easy to get around and the traffic is not as crazy as other big cities. Thus with one of the travelers that we met on the boat we decided to hire a scooter for the day and see the main sights (this would be a death sentence in any other city). As we rode through Kochin and then took the bike ferry across to an island opposite (Vypeen). The local people were shocked and amazed to see us on bikes, the smiles, hello's and even people stopping us to shake our hands was unbelievable.

Riding the Backwaters

Still feeling a bit green (me) we decided to jump aboard the 8hr cruise of the Keralan backwaters, and although being aboard a boat when not well did not sound wise, the quite and relaxation of the cruise revived me greatly, with the first truly peaceful experience that I had in India I had time to take it all in and start appreciating the trip again.

It was wash day along the quite villages that line the backwaters and we saw endless lines of colourful sari's cobalt blues, emerald greens, and fuscia pinks cut with gold finishing, next to tiny pair’s of bright yellow shorts and singlets and yet more women on the banks beating their soapy clothes to within an inch of themselves.

The day was bright and the water calm, the first four hours we spent waving to every passer by, taking excited photo's, and marveling at the many eagles that flew overhead, the next four was spent drinking tea and chatting with our fellow travelers, two from Sydney, one from Melbourne and one from London who shared our joy and frustration at traveling in India, I was hearted to see that everyone was having their ups and downs but that at the end of the day they were still loving it.

Survival of the fittest

Hello all, sadly the blog is far behind and I need to do a big round up blog of our trip to Kerala.

One night in hell in Varhala.....

Having had enough of the rain and the general drab of Tamil Nadu we decided it was time to move on to the state of Kerala, which we had heard many, many good things about. Heading straight for the beach to what we heard was a quiet seaside town, we found instead a town built only for tourists virtually in the weeks before we had got there (one of the rooms we looked at was so new the plastic had not even been removed off the mattress).

Should have know that the town was going to be trouble when as soon as we stepped of the bus a beggar latched onto us, a women demanding money - after 8hrs on a train and 3hrs on a bus...I had had enough. But to make things worse I look down and see in a bundle in her sari a substantial amount of money not just coins but notes....I lost it and started pointing at her bundle of cash and asking her why she was begging and told her I should be asking her for money, as you could imagine it was quite a scene and the auto drivers thought it was a scream.

Varhala was virtually empty of tourists, the terrorist’s attacks and the news of floods had apparently scared many away, this meant that everyone in the town was fighting for our business (you would think this might mean lowering prices and bargaining a little) no! this meant calling out to you constantly every time you passed imploring you to come into their shops and then if you did brave going in they would tell you to buy everything your eye ran over or that you touched.

The people that you have to deal with as a tourist here are awful, if they work for the government (bus/train/tourist office) they basically don't care and make it very clear that you are irritating them. The private operators will hassle you to death until you buy and then not deliver on half of what they have promised. Its a strange mix of people that feel nothing but disdain for you and are quite happy for you to know it and people who suck up to you endlessly, but the undying feeling is the same aggression.

Feeling for the first time all of this bearing down on me I hated Varhala immediately as did Greg although it was pretty, it was just for tourists, kind of like the Rocks except imagine walking through and having someone call out "hello madam, hello madam come in, free to look, yes what would you like, Pepsi, coke, Miranda, biscuits, ice creams" over and over again.

India can be hard traveling, it's can't really be classified as a fun travel it's more like a survival course with some amazing moments and sights to break it up. With all of this floating through my head I tried to settle down to sleep for our first night in Kerala. Soon after the dark covered everything the rain started pelting down outside as thunder rolled loudly in the distance, at about midnight the storm caused the power to blow out, and room soon sweltered with heat as the fan had stopped and mosquito's started blistering my skin.

I awoke feeling an overwhelming grief and cried for hours, Greg in an attempt to calm me lit a mosquito coil. Still crying and heady with the pungent smell of the coil I fell asleep, dreaming of bloody murder and death and awoke choked and heavy. The rest of the night was spent awake trying to figure out what I was doing and whether coming to India was a good decision, after four years of Uni I needed a break and this did not feel like a break.

What I was feeling beside the exhaustion which many travelers experience here was the dawning of food poisoning, I spent the next two days vomiting, pooing and pacing our room because I couldn't sleep and so began our trip through Kerala....but wait because I does get better….