day8

Day 8 : "The inmates from here have been moved to another cell".

Knock, knock! the sound that woke us, it was the room boy at the door wanting to know if we would like some coffee delivered to the room?
NO, I would like some sleep.
I was just dropping back off to sleep when, "ring, ring, ring" the phone screamed loudly,
"what the f+*k now?" I murmured to myself.
Nick answered it, "sorry wrong number!"
It must have been someone getting the wrong room number for a friend staying in another part of the hotel.
Nick got up and headed for the bathroom, I lay there for a few minutes collecting my thoughts before getting up, some bloody lay in, it was only 6.15 a.m.

The view from our 5th floor window was not what you might call spectacular, it was simply a view up along the main road to the North of town. From where I was stood I could quite clearly see the railway station that was considered " Far" by rickshaw drivers standards, a two minute walk by anyone else's.

Opposite the station and on the same side of the road as our hotel was the main bus station, which was already teeming with what seemed like thousands of people, jumping on and off dilapidated looking buses that were coming and going, and seem to run forever coughing out black smoke like a wheezing old man.

"Thiruvananthapuram" otherwise known as Trivandrum is the capital city of the state of Kerala, boasting very little in the way of interest for tourists, or at least these two tourists. This city with an estimated population of just under one million people is a noisy fume filled place.    It is purely a functional city that is home to the Keralan Government, which incidentally is the only freely elected Communist government in all of India.

Kerala boasts one very impressive statistic, this being that the state has a 100% literacy rate, compared with an average of around 60 to 70% for the rest of the country.

I'm sure it has some other good points, but we did not plan to hang about to find them. Our original plan was to rest here for the night after our train journey, then have a look around in the morning before heading on around midday, unless of course we did find something worth hanging around for.
The guidebook did not go over the top on things to see in this city, and up to now it had not been wrong, so we stuck by it making our plans to leave after lunch. Our major concern was that we would run out of time if we stayed to long in certain places, we wanted to spend as much time as possible in the places we thought would be best.

It was around seven when we left the hotel to look for somewhere to eat breakfast, the first place recommended by the guide book did not look too healthy, so we gave it a miss and carried on walking around until we finally came back to the hotel. We had a quick breakfast here before taking a rickshaw to the North side of town where a collection of Museums and a small Zoo are housed.
The park was like a haven away from the noise and pollution all around, it was laid out with very well manicured lawns and nicely planted shrubs and flowers, there were also various species of trees, which were also in bloom.

We walked around in a clockwise direction until we came to the small Zoological Garden, Nick did not want to go in, being that he is opposed to animals being caged, which is a sentiment I can fully respect and understand.
I on the other hand, while having sympathy for caged animals decided I would take a look around. Nick said he was happy to continue walking around alone while I went to the Zoo.

The entrance fee for the Zoo was 5 rupees and another 5 rupees for taking my camera in, this equates to around 14p in English money. 10 rupees, you would pay at least ten pounds to get into London Zoo!
I enjoyed my walk around the small Zoo, which was well laid out, and easy to follow the winding circular route it took, passing the animal enclosures set in a semi woodland environment.
There was also a lake that served as a resting place for a few species of wading birds and other wildfowl, and had Nick been with me he could have named them all for me from his bird spotters guide to India.

A gang of about eight boys who saw me photographing the animals tagged along beside me for a while asking all sorts of questions, they were fascinated watching everything I did, maybe they were aspiring cameramen and wanted to pick up some photography tips. But I think more than likely what fascinated them, was watching me getting so frustrated and annoyed with the bloody lens that was still not working correctly.
They soon got fed up waiting for me when I stopped for about ten minutes by the lake where there were thousands of bats in the canopies of the trees that surrounded it. One of the boys called out excitedly for to me to follow, but I waved him on, preferring instead to wrestle with lens, which was now working sporadically, but it was a waste of time in the end.

Some of the animals, such as the Elephant, Hippo's, Rhino's and Giraffe in this zoo looked as though they were well treated and had plenty of room to move about, while the Lions, Tigers and leopards looked a little distressed in their small caged compounds. And for some reason there were plenty of all these big cats, but very few in numbers of any of the other species housed here.

I suppose what just about summed up this Zoo was a sign I read on a empty cage near the exit. It read as follows: "The inmates from here have been moved to another cell".

Nick was sitting alone at a table by the refreshment bar just outside the zoo waiting patiently for me. It was strange not to find him in conversation with an Indian, who are great talkers and love nothing better than a little rap with tourists. These conversations are a great way to find out things about each other's lives and cultures, and are normally quite an enjoyable experience, even with the hustlers you can learn something new all the time.
He had walked the full circular route of the park, and had even been to the reptile house, which by all accounts was not worth seeing. We sat and had a cold drink watching everyone else watching us before moving on to the Napier museum. The museum, which was housed in the centre of the park was surrounded by lovely well-kept lawns with beautiful flowerbeds and intricate stonewalls.

This museum houses "a collection of bronzes, historical and contemporary ornaments, temple carts, ivory carvings and life size figures of Kathakali dancers in full costume" Some of the pieces on display were of such an intricate nature, it would have been hard not to appreciate the work that had gone into their creation.   The Maharajas certainly only had the finest of everything and accepted nothing less than perfection from their craftsmen, and probably more to the point, these craftsmen accepted nothing less than perfection from themselves.

Outside the gate was a taxi rank where rickshaws were coming and going, we stood here for a few minutes fending off the drivers requests   We were watching a young girl aged around six or seven years old who was performing a tight rope act across the road. Her dexterity was unbelievable on the rope strung up about six or seven feet above the pavement, right next to a tiled wall that was an open latrine.
The little girl performed her act in time to the music being played on a flute like instrument by a man who was below her, he was moving about so as to be there to catch her should she fall. How he would have done this with the instrument being held to his mouth by both hands was thankfully something I never got to see.

Now if only the street entertainers were this good in England you would not mind giving them some money. Instead all we usually get is some long haired hippy type banging out a few chords of a song no one has ever heard on his beat up guitar, with the obligatory mongrel dog sat beside him for added sympathy from passers by.   And have you ever noticed, more times than not, a lot of these buskers are just tuning up the guitar as you pass by, it makes you wonder if they can play the things in the first place, because it's nigh on guaranteed when you pass by again on your way back they are still tuning up.

In hindsight we should have stayed a bit longer in Trivandrum, because I'm sure that we would have found it a worthwhile experience, but time was tight and we wanted to press on.

Nick went to pay the bill as we checked out of the Hotel around twelve thirty, the woman behind the desk said that the man who had checked us in the night before had got his sums wrong, and we had not been quoted the right price! Oh here we go again we thought, but it turned out that he had not put some tax on the bill, which would be another twelve rupees. We could suffer that!

As Nick settled the bill I got talking to a Scottish lad who was standing behind us. He was living in Bangalore for a while trying to set up some business in computers, and as business was slow had decided to tour around for a little while, and so found himself here in Trivandrum.
He was telling me about his adventures so far, and where he thought we should and should not go as we travelled on. It was nice to hear his experiences, but we were on our own adventure and didn't want to relive someone else's.
To this end I did not really take to much notice of his hotel recommendations and such like.

We chose to sort out our own taxi for the trip down the coast to Varkala, which was really no more than a two-hour drive at most according to our estimates. Plus we didn't want to give the hotel the privilege of getting the commission.

Within two minutes of leaving the hotel we were in a taxi and on our way after having negotiated a price with the driver. Our driver today was one of the most laid back people we have ever come across in India, he was in no great hurry to get us there and drove like we would have done ourselves, showing courtesy to other divers and rather surprisingly, only overtaking when it was absolutely safe to do so.

Nick was a little disappointed not to get his adrenalin rush, but I enjoyed the almost sedate pace, especially as I was sitting in the front seat and a little closer to the action. There was no need to keep asking Nick what the time was, this was more like a sightseeing trip and as such, no rush to get there.

As we drove along the driver was doing his best to point out interesting things to us, and also took the time explain what he could. He told us that his name was Francis, and that he had been named after a Saint being that he was a Catholic, and quite proud of the fact. He also went to great lengths as he further told us that everybody got on well with each other in this part of India, no matter what . There was no tension between Hindu's and Muslims or Christians with everybody getting on and being respectful of each other's religions. This was nice to hear, and a far cry from a lot of other places in the country.

Here in Kerala the percentage of religious beliefs is around 60% Hindu, 20% Islamic, and 20% Christian.
There are two other religions that make up a very small percentage, these being Jainism and Judaism.
As Francis was a Christian he did not fall into the caste system that prevails so strongly in India still.

Francis stopped the car as we were about to cross a causeway over one of the lakes when he saw me reach for my camera, this allowed me to get out and take some pictures without the worry of camera shake.
The scenery was quite breath taking as we moved ever closer to the backwaters through mile after mile of coconut groves and banana plantations, there were also some very appealing, and very large turquoise coloured lagoons, which looked so inviting with children swimming and women doing the wash, while the men fished from their small boats.
Everywhere you cared to look was a picture opportunity that was added to by the glorious dark blue sky that you only see in holiday brochures.

Francis also pointed out the large salt flats along the way, this he said was where a good majority of the salt used in India and the rest of the World was mined, if that's the right term? As there were no mines, just miles of flat lake like beds of salt that looked like frozen ice that refused to melt in the scorching sun. Every few hundred metres there were great mounds of the salt that had been dredged, (I think that's a better way to describe it) that looked like great white haystacks.

Varkala was only a 50 Km ride from Trivandrum and even with stopping a couple of times and a slow ride down, we were still there in under two hours.
Francis stopped at the rickshaw stand at the entry to town to ask directions for the Panchvadi beach resort, which was the place we had chosen to stay from the guidebook.

It's not unusual to see two men holding hand's in India as this is quite an accepted thing between friends, and is done more as a bonding thing than anything else. It may even have something to do with the fact that boys and girls don't have any real contact with the opposite sex until they marry.   I would never dream of holding Nicks hand because of the stigma attached to this kind of behaviour in our society, in fact the only thing of Nicks I wanted to hold was his pocket watch, but there was no way he was not letting go of that.

Anyway back to these two rickshaw drivers who were sat together holding hands. The first thing I noticed about one of them as he rested his hand on the open window beside me, was that his finger nails were painted, again nothing to strange about that, but what really made me look was his thumb nail. I'm not kidding when I say it must have been at least four or five inches long! And it was just his thumb, all the other nails were a respectable length. I'm still trying to work out what that was all about, as I'm sure there must have been a good reason for it. I can't remember if it was his left or right hand, which may, or may not be significant? But I don't think I really want to go there.

The two boys got very animated in a friendly way as they pointed Francis in the right direction, this turned out to be a simple matter of turning left and following the road for about as far as you could go, roughly half a kilometre. As we left Francis to make his way back to Trivandrum he gave us his mobile telephone number, saying that should we require his services again, we were not to hesitate in giving him a ring.

Panchavadi Beach Resort sounds like a rather big place on the beach, but is in fact no more than a large single storey building painted a sandy yellow, looking a bit like a large prefab, which has seven smallish guest rooms tucked either side of the hallway that runs through the middle of it.

The building is located in a small compound just off the quite road that serves as the access point to the beach 500 metres away. Entering from the road and on the left it has a slightly raised terrace which looks out towards the sea, but you cannot actually view the sea from here as it is obscured by palm trees and vegetation growing in a expanse of open land where cows and goats were grazing happily.

This view in itself was not a bad one to have, it certainly beat looking out onto a busy city from a fifth floor window, that's for sure.
Situated on the raised concrete terrace are seven or eight enclosed and covered seating areas where guests can take their meals, should they so require. We would certainly be using it!

The Panchavadi is run by a French woman who spoke good English, but left most of the day to day running of the place to a young Indian Boy, and another older man.
The room we were allocated was more than adequate for us, having two double beds and attached bathroom that was a little on the small side, but served the purpose it was designed for having just a toilet, small hand basin and shower head on the wall. The only trouble with it being so small was that when the shower was on everything would get wet, so we had to remember to leave the toilet paper outside.
And for just 300 rupees a night we could hardly complain about this, it was clean and cool, which was all you can ask for.

We were the only two people there apart from a young English couple that kept themselves to themselves, they were in love and had a lot more exciting things do to then Nick and I.

If there is one thing I like about backpacking more than anything else, it's that you don't have to mess about unpacking suitcases, you simply throw your rucksack on your bed, or in a corner without having to worry about creasing your clothes. They get nicely creased as it is in the rucksack.
We were in and out of the room in a few minutes, or at least I was, Nick had to go and mark his new territory in the bathroom.

Papanasham beach was no more than 500 metres from the Panchavadi beach resort, and was the place we headed to first when we came out.

Our breakfast this morning had not been anything substantial so we were both feeling a little hungry as we stopped at the beach restaurant No.1. This was no more than a wooden shack with palm leaf walls and roof and a sand based floor. Here we sat at a plastic table in sticky plastic chairs looking out to the sea, which was no more than a hundred metres away across the hot sands.
On first impressions it was all quite idyllic and peaceful, with not too many other people around. Where we were sat there were no more than three or four other people eating, the stray dogs and crows hanging around looking for scraps far outnumbered the people.
The food here was very good and plentiful, I can't remember what we ate, but we enjoyed so much so, that we said we would return that evening when the owner asked if we had enjoyed our meal.

The old man who shuffled up to us as we sat there produced some greeting cards that had hand painted leaves on the inside, they were really quite nice, and we bought some after he told us they had been made by orphans, or the disabled or whatever it was.    Hand made by those less fortunate than ourselves is always a good line for selling this kind of thing, just look at the packs of Christmas cards and such like that come through the letter box at home every year.
It didn't really matter as we both genuinely liked them, so felt that we were not being forced to buy them out of a guilty conscience.

When we had finished our lunch and got back out onto the sand, Nick declared that he had to go back to the hotel for a few minutes, He probably hadn't marked enough of his territory.
I walked on along the beach to sit on some rocks while waiting for him to come back, which it turned out was not to long, must have been a false alarm, but I didn't want to go into the details.

About half a kilometre along the beach there was a large channel of water cut into the sand, this was flowing with God knows what and was being fed from a pipe running down the side of the cliff face, and through the channel into the sea. Discretion being the better part of valour, and the fact that we both were wearing or sandals, we thought it would be better to climb the cliff via the steep steps cut into the side, rather than walk through what was probably sewage.

Once we were up on the cliff top we found that there were a few more restaurants and small boarding houses, along with a host of makeshift craft shops and the like.

The path along this cliff top was quite near the edge, and in a good proportion of the route had no barrier to stop you from wandering off and near certain death, unless of course you could survive the one hundred or so feet drop to the bottom. This was certainly not the route to take home in the dark if you had been drinking, and I made a note not to get pissed anywhere up here.

Nick was still after getting some beads, and his luck was in when we came across a ramshackle place that was being run by a young woman from Tibet. She had just what Nick was looking for, and in every shape and size you could imagine.
While Nick looked around I stood outside being offered everything under the sun by a young man at the next shack that doubled as his shop. He was a nice enough lad who was telling me that he was not from around this part of India, he was merely here for the tourist season. He had rented this shop to sell his crafts, and both he and his immediate family all worked and lived here for the duration.
"Have you also rented somewhere to live in the town?" I asked.
"No, we all live here in shop" he replied laughing.
"Where do you all sleep then"
"On the floor of course" He answered.
"Oh, right!" Was all I could say, not really wanting to pry any further.

Although I liked a few things he had for sale, especially a couple of hand made wooden puppets, I did not buy anything from him, but I did promise that if I wanted to buy anything anywhere else I would first give him the chance to beat their price.
He made me promise I would do this at least three times before finally letting me get away.

Nick emerged from the Tibetan ladies tent full of smiles, but without having bought anything either.
He was planning to go back the next day and look again, as there had been some things he had liked.
"What's the time" I half said, but thought better of it as we walked on. I could have checked the time by the position of the sun, if only I knew how!

We had stopped beside a rail full of Indian style shirts, "Alwight mayte" said a voice coming from behind the rail. "A've a look, they're all a noice price"
"Which part of London are you from" I asked the man in fits of laughter.
"I'm not from Larndun, but my friend is mayte" said the shop owner trying his best to mimic a Londoners cockney accent, as he emerged into the open sunshine.

I would say he was a man in his thirty's, constantly smiling and cracking jokes he introduced himself and then went into the hard sell for his shirts on the rail. They were all pretty tatty and not what we wanted.
"No problem I'll make you some, just come in the shop and pick the cloth you want"
We had a look around the shop and I eventually chose some material, after first negotiating a price of 200 rupees for the two shirts I wanted made.

Nick was not sure he wanted any shirts so deferred his decision until the next day when we would pick up the shirts. A little further up the coast after walking through a small palm grove we dropped down onto the beach again, finding ourselves by a small fishing village. There were a few fishermen around repairing there nets and such like, but not to much else going on, so we decided to turn around and head back to the e-mail centre we had seen on the way.

While Nick was using the computer to send his e-mail home I got talking to middle aged Englishman who was outside waiting to get on a machine. He told me that his friend and he, who both lived in Fulham, West London, came over here every year on their own spiritual quest, something which they had been doing since the late seventies when they first started coming as hippies. Now they were very middle class businessmen and had to act accordingly at home. So they told their wife's that they made this trip for spiritual and mystical reasons, which was something the women were not into, so the wives stayed at home while they followed their spiritual calling.

He said it was great as the two of them spent most of their time getting completely stoned and drinking as much beer as possible, which was something they did not, and could not do at home. If only their wives knew that they were not on the kind of spiritual quest they thought they were!

It was nearly six thirty when we returned to the Panchavadi where we ordered some tea to be taken on the outside terrace. When the boy eventually brought the tea and laid everything out in front of us, we had to call him back, both of us looked at him inquisitively? He looked at us blankly and asked if there was something wrong, we started laughing and eventually had to tell him what the joke was.
He had brought the pot of tea with sugar and milk, and had even laid out the saucers and spoons, but there were no cups! He saw the funny side of it and went running off a little embarrassed returning shortly with the required items.
While we had his attention we asked if he would take care of some laundry for us, this of course was no problem, nothing is ever too much trouble for these people.

There were a couple of uninvited guests in our room when we returned!
The first cockroach I found was climbing nonchalantly up the curtain beside my bed, I managed to quickly catch it and threw it out the open window.

It was, as I was getting ready for a shower that I spotted the next cockroach, which looked about the size of a baby's fist, or near as dam it. There then followed a chase not to dissimilar to the old Keystone cops movies, with Nick shuffling around the room on all fours, then claiming to have caught the intruder only to open his hand and see it scoot off to another part of the room.

We finally cornered it by the door where Nick caught it after about 5 minutes of frantic chasing . It would have been easy just to stamp on it, but we wanted to give it a chance to visit some of the other rooms in the building so, we let it out into the hallway and watched as it scurried away looking for somewhere else to doss down for the night.

Cockroaches are a lot more scared of me than I am of them, but I was still a little wary as I went into the bathroom as there could have been more of them on a family outing, and I didn't want one crawling all over me..
We were going to eat this evening back at the same place where we had our lunch. Looking around the restaurant while we waited for the meal, I suddenly thought to myself " I don't remember this table or that table from lunch time" even the dogs loitering for scraps were different.
It was no bloody wonder I couldn't remember these things, we were in a different restaurant! Obviously we had walked past the original number one restaurant in the darkness that had now descended. Mind you they did all look pretty similar from the outside, as they were really no more than a lean to with a palm roof.

The meal itself was more than passable so there was no real problem there, it was just our sense of direction and memories that were lacking.

Around ten thirty we returned to the Panchavadi where we were about to take our shoes off before entering, when the French woman came running out, calling to us in a state of frenzy to hurry to her room! Blimey we had only just met the woman and now she wanted the both of us to come to her bedroom.
Our luck was out, she was not screaming with the delight of seeing us, she was shouting there had been another plane fly into a building in Italy, and it was showing on cable TV.   We went to her room fearing the worst, and ready to witness further scenes of carnage in the name of some terrorist organisation.
I thought we would be seeing images of a 747 ploughing into the side of a building, like we had previously seen in New York. Thankfully it was nothing like this, as the plane involved was a light aircraft that had flown directly into a building, which thankfully had no people in at the time. The only people who would lose out on this was the pilot, who by all accounts knew what he was doing, and of course the insurance company who would have to pay out for the building damage.

I was not going to take any chances with the cockroaches who obviously had a liking for our room, so before getting into my bed I pulled the cover back slowly ready to pounce on any of the buggers I found.
Fortunately I found no cockroaches under the cover, but what I did find was just as annoying.
There were no sheets on the bed, just the bare mattress and pillows without covers. We were both prepared for this eventuality and had to search through our rucksacks to use our own sheets that we had brought with us. These were folded over and stitched up on one side so as to make a lightweight sleeping bag.