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En Route to Ahmedabad, Gujurat, India – We both awoke at 4:30 a.m. due to the clambouring, bumping and talking of the Indians in the compartments on either side of ours. Laid in bed for a few hours until the sun came up, then we got up when we heard the calls of “chai” echoing down the corridor of our carriage.
We raised the window facing the corridor and passed our cups through the bars to the chai man. The bars on the window to the hallway not only kept us in our cell, but they served as a beautiful protective measure against the beggars and peddlers we didn’t want to deal with. The jayfay visited shortly after tea, so I resigned myself to reading Alice in Wonderland and standing in the doorway of our carriage watching the world go by.
Trivandrum, Kerala, India – We woke up and judging by the temperature outside at 10:00 a.m. we declared a “Weather First No. 2” This was by far the hottest day we’d experienced in India. Our heat wave wasn’t going to last that long, for we were crossing out of the tropical zone for the first time since we’d entered it way back in October in Botswana & Zambia. Boo hoo.
We headed over to the station, but of course a train had derailed somewhere up the line so our train was delayed. None of the station workers knew which trains were coming or going or whether our train would depart at all. Wonderfil – and I was about to willingly board a train for two entire days? What was I thinking?
Our train finally pulled up at 4:00 p.m. and we found our first class coupe (pronounced coup-ay) which was to serve as our cell for the next fifty hours. The coupe had two fold down beds, one of which doubled as the seat during the day, plus two small tables, one in each corner of the room. We had one window looking outside and one, with bars on it, which faced the train’s hallway – another glass windowon the opposite side of the corridor.
We dumped our stuff down and to our surprise the train pulled away at 4:30 p.m., just as soon as everyone had boarded. Not a lot to do on a train, so the jayfay visited, and as the lights in our room were too dim to read by once the sun had gone down we retired early for the evening.
Trivandrum, Kerala, India – Rich had to go to the post office, so I arranged to meet him on the beach later in the afternoon, went to the bank to restock the coffers for the northern half of the country. Then boarded an Indian version of an African matatu down to Kovalam beach.
Looking out the window during the ride, I reflected on what we had seen so far and came to this conclusion, India is not just one country, each state is totally different from every other state. The peoples’ attitudes, the language, the food, and even some of the customs change each time you cross the border into a different state. India could actually be seen as a working model for the European Community, for each state has their own individual identity and their own regional state governments all under the umbrella of the central government of India. The Europeans are all concerned that they would lose their identity under the European Union, but the individual Indian states are living proof that such a union can, in fact exist.
Our matatu arrived in Kovalam, which is a very large western tourist resort. It is nice, no doubt, but extremely touristy with prices to match. There are two coasts, each beach lined with row after row of restaurants and craft shops all over-priced. Great place for a two-week holiday, definitely better than Goa, but not for the budget traveler.
I lounged around on the beach and swam a lot, for we were about to travel north and be land locked for at least two months. I went walking around in the afternoon and met Rich at 5 p.m. We sat and had tea while watching the sun set over the Indian Ocean. We headed back to Trivandrum for dinner and to buy food for our two-day train journey. Surely thereafter, we returned to the room to relax and read Alice in Wonderland, a great book to read when high.
We grabbed a bus to Trivandrum, the Kerala state capital, first thing in the morning after the India Coffee House breakfast. As our bus without windows was cruising along, Rich turned to me and said, “Did you see that?” “See what?” was my reply. “The sun just went behind a cloud,” he responded while pointing into the sky. When you do not see clouds for weeks at a time it is major event when one actually interferes with the sun.
We arrived in Trivandrum, which did not give the impression of being a state capital at all. It had narrow streets lined with shops, all under a palm tree canopy. A real sleepy feel to the whole city. We found a hotel and immediately went to the train station to sort out a ticket to Northern India. We have been here six weeks and have not made it to the north yet. We are getting stuck again, but that was to end fairly quickly.
Our train ride up to Ahmedabad, north of Bombay was going to take us around 50 hours, so we both immediately decided a first class berth was absolutely necessary for a hell ride like that. The first class ticket cost us Rs. 1083 or $35. We wandered through the streets of Trivandrum for the remainder of the day avoiding the heat of the days as the locals do. We are getting good at this. Since there are not a lot of noteworthy sites in Trivandrum, we just vegged in a movie theater that evening viewing that cinematic masterpiece, Miami Blues.
The theaters in India are all pretty shoddy, so it can be rather difficult finding a seat comfortable enough to endure for 2 hours. We sat on a couple of seats and the second I sat down, my seat folded down farther than it should, making me end up sitting on the floor. Rich tried another seat, which seemed to be okay, but then almost cut his arm open on the exposed metal where the armrest was supposed to be. My next seat had a spring poking me in the butt and Rich’s next choice had a seat back that felt like you were sitting at a 45-degree angle forward. The two of us then split up and proceeded to give at least 25 seats each, comfort test drive, the locals all turned around and had a great time watching the two sahibs running around the theater trying out every available seat. We finally ended up seating in two separate rows, one seat from each other deciding that these were the only two unbroken seats in the theater.
After watching the garbagy American film, we were exiting the theater and just as I was telling Rich what thrash the movie was, I heard this voice with an Australian accent pipe up from the back row. “Was not that a horrible movie”? Low-and-behold, who should be sitting in the theater, but Reuben and Nikki who had made it down to Trivandrum on their way to Sri Lanka. We chatted with them and went out for coffee until midnight, seeing that they were heading to Nepal after Sri Lanka, we arranged to meet them in Katmandu on March 15th outside the general post office at 2 o’ clock if we were there by then. Who knows, we saw Simon from Egypt two months later in Zimbabwe, so you never know what could happen again.
 Alleppy, Kerala, India – We got up early this morning and boarded the boat for an our all day journey to Quillon via the delta backwaters. Our boat pulled away and Rich and I grabbed prime seats in the sun on the roof to take in the sites. The backwaters consist of series of canals, which create long strips of land where the people live with water on either side. The palm trees all lean out over the water and the narrower channels making a very pleasant green canopy for us to cruise under.
We marveled at the fact that these people had built full houses complete with large families. In addition to having cows, goats, all animals on a strip of land somewhere between 25 to 20 yards across, it was amazing. We passed full cities constructed along the water complete with bus “boat” stops to shuttle the hoards of school kids to school. I have so many photos of this trip mainly because we were so impressed with what we had seen. A
fter a few hours, Rich made a comment that it was sort of like visiting the zoo because we the sahibs were in our boat protected by water between us and the animals, the locals out on shore. We saw tons of locals both men and women up to their shoulders in the water picking clams up off the bottom of the canal. Men diving down and coming up and putting huge chunks of mud into their boats was another common site. We figured they would use it for building materials.
Due to the fact that we were on a government-sponsored tourist boat, we had to see the stupider, lesser known sites like the largest snake racing boat in India along with the coir coconut fiber factory, where they make door mats and garbage like that. After our lunch stop, we met Reuben, who is an Australian and Nikki, a German up on the roof deck. Both were great fun to talk to and it helped pass the time when the novelty of the backwater life had worn off. Reuben is the ex-marketing manager for Polygram records, Australia. He had met tons of people and had a real career before he quit to go travelling just like the rest of us. He did tell us about his escapades with heavy metal band, Metallica, New York. Nikki is a travel agent from Germany and when we found that out, I pulled out our plane tickets to see if we could cash them in for we had heard about cheaper flights to the places where we are headed and we were looking at travelling for longer than the tickets are valid for.
We arrived in Quillon shortly after dark and ended up going out to dinner with Nikki and Reuben after checking into a rather hot grotty hotel. Quillon is no where near as impressive as Alleppey, so after wandering around the city after dinner, we figured we had seen enough.
8th February, 1993, Cochin, Ernakulam –
Up late morning and back to the Indian Coffee House to create an entire table of dirty dishes. Walked around a bit but it was oppressively hot, so went back to the room to escape the heat “relaxed”. The only notable thing we did do was call our friend Mariita in Hong Kong to sort out our travel arrangements with her. Too hot a day to do anything.
9th February, 1993, Cochin to Alleppey –
Caught a bus to Alleppey after breakfast at the Indian Coffee House, which is further south down the Peninsula. Alleppey is a quiet little town set on the bunch of canals rather like Amsterdam or Venice. The draw here is that is the embarkation point for the boat journey through the backwaters of Kerala. The state of Kerala became the first place in the world to freely elect a communist government of power. As a result, everywhere we went in Alleppey had signs of a communist regime. Cooperatives forms and hammer and sickle flags hung everywhere. There were even large hammer and sickle designs set into the tar of the roads. After a long walk all over Alleppey, we rested during the heat of the day.
 Cochin / Ernakulam, Kerala, India – Got up and went to our usual breakfast at the Indian Coffee House. After walking around for a spell we decided it was too damn hot to be outside so we headed back to the room to play the new game we’d invented two nights before. It’s called 999 (because that’s the number you have to play to) and it uses two decks of cards shuffled together so you have no clue as to what cards are going to be coming up. It’s sort of like Rummy 500 with a few twists to the rules – too many to put in print here. We played 999 until 4:00 p.m., for we had to get some food and catch the boat across the bay to Vypeen – Cochin’s version of Marin. 18k’s north of Vypeen in a city called Cherai it was the final night of the Pooram Festival at the Sree Goureeswara Temple. Who were we to miss a festival – no way.
We caught the car ferry across the water, and it just so happened that a wedding party’s cars and bus were also on the boat across. I spotted the bride and groom in one of the cars and all I can say is that the bride looked very, very young, and as the Indians have arranged weddings she looked terrified. She was sitting next to the groom and all she could do was pull her shawl up under her nose and look away from him in fear – not once did I see her look him in the face.
Our boat arrived at Vypeen and we jumped on the bus with the crazyman driver at the wheel – as usual. You see, in order to get a bus driver’s certificate you absolutely must have a lead foot for the gas pedal – it’s a standard Indian requirement. Our bus literally flew down our one and a half lane road with villages and houses whizzing by (some not more than 10 inches from the side of the bus)! We arrives at the festival at Cherai a short while later; we knew we were at the festival by the sea of people walking down the street towards the temple. We walked and found the temple with little problem – it was the 21 live elephants decorated with silver and gold standing in a row outside the temple that gave it away.
 There was a large courtyard outside the temple and when we walked up there it was like being at a concert in Wembly Arena – people everywhere. Plus as we were at least half a head taller than everyone else we had a great view over the crowd and could see how far this sea of people stretched. As there didn’t appear to be much going on yet, the fireworks were much later, so Rich and I took a walk through the town to see what was up. It was a real carnival atmosphere with people everywhere.
As we were walking down the street every single person walking the opposite direction was STARING at us. You’d have thought we were zoo animals that’d escaped the way these people were watching us. Of course to the locals we do double as zoo animals on a very regular basis while traveling around. This was different though, out of a crowd of more than 100,000 people we were the only Westerners, and from the looks you could tell some of those people had never seen a sahib before. We just walked along returning the “Hellos” called to us, shaking a few hands, before we decided to head back towards the temple to see if anything was happening yet.
During our walk, on the way back a group of guys about our age walked up and started talking to us. I was walking behind Rich when one of these five guys walked up to him and held his hand, as is accepted in Indian culture for men to walk along holding hands. They don’t do it with any sexual connotation attached, the males just hold hands with their friends – it’s a socially accepted thing in India. Before I knew it another Indian dude was holding my hand and talking with me. Rich tried to get his hand free, but couldn’t, so he just talked to the dude some more, whereas whenever I let got of the hand holding mine it would just re-attach itself. In talking with this guy I did find out that NO Westerners come to their festivals. We walked along and talked with these guys en route to the temple. When we arrives there they let go of our hands and said they’d meet us later.
Rich and I walked through the crowd, which was swelling even more than before by this time – all eyes on us, and every once in a while one of our friends that we’d met on the way over would come over and chat to us. I guess if you knew the sahibs you may as well flaunt it, especially in this environment where everyone in the village would see them talking to us. We walked to a point where we could see the elephant procession when I spotted a little girl about nine years old looking in our direction, but hadn’t actually spotted us yet. She spotted us moments later and her mouth dropped open in awe. After five seconds of shock, staring at us (mouth still open), she reached up and without taking her eyes off us fumbled to grab her older sister’s arm to tell her there were two white dudes at the festival. She got her sister’s attention then blatantly pointed at us as she said something to her sibling. I smiled at her which scared the hell out of her, causing her to hide on the opposite side of her sister, occasionally poking her head out to take a peek at us. From the expression on her face you’d have thought she was seeing extra-terrestrials or something!
Shortly after the little girl’s sighting we met this nice man who worked at some university in Kerala. He took us to tea and asked us questions about America. He was really well educated and didn’t seem spooked about our presence like a majority of the population there seemed to be. He asked if we had elephants in America, I guess we didn’t realize that elephants are pretty commonplace to an Indian, like dogs to us. I told him we didn’t have elephants, only dogs. “You eat dogs?” he asked. “No, we eat c–” and cut myself off before saying “cows”; we were at a Hindu festival, as Rich finished my sentence with “We eat other things.” After tea we walked back into the crowd to see what was going on, for now there were large cannons going off at 10 minute intervals, and there was a red flare of some sort being held above one of the elephants.
Every time we stepped into the crowd people would gather around to talk to and look at us. There was always a row of people walking past to have a look at us. At one point I felt like a royal dignitary greeting the guests at a social gathering. With all these people constantly around you it was (as we decided later) a dose of movie star fame. It wasn’t popularity, because that’s when everyone likes you. This was fame – when you’re just all around known to the people and a spectacle. “fame – n. state of being widely known or recognized.” With both of us a minimum of two to three inches taller than everyone else we were easily identifiable and people were definitely going out of their way to have a look. Some of the people in the crowd surrounding us (a certain few who we’d been speaking to) must have been wasted, because at one point they dragged over an Indian albino and told him he was another Westerner at their festival. They though it was funny and I was rather appalled. This was all going on in an atmosphere of ear-shattering cannon blasts, Indian men talking to us constantly from every direction, and the crowd surrounding us getting bigger by the minute.
I decided it was time to break this up so we moved to a slightly more secluded area where our friends from the street found us again. We stood there and watched the elephant procession move forward, then eventually disperse in every direction with elephants going everywhere through the crowd. The viewing line of Indians soon appeared to our right and our crowd around us was beginning to form again, so shortly after the elephants made their exit we decided to make ours as well; there are only so many hands you can shake and people you can talk to at one time.
Being that the elephants were exiting in all directions you couldn’t leave the area without walking past one. We were almost out of the crowd, with the street in sight, when one of the three elephants blocking the way decided to take a few steps closer to the crowd. Well the pachyderm’s actions almost caused a riot because everyone kept smashing up against one another and screaming to get out of the way as the elephant got closer and closer. The animal finally sorted itself out enough so Rich and I could make our way out of the crowd, passing between two of the elephants, and out onto the street.
We were still famous as ever; people were touching and pinching me, screaming “Hello” and staring away as Rich and I made our way through the masses down the street. We jumped on one of the sardine can packed buses (where we met some more of our Indian friends from the festival) and headed back to the port at Vypeen.
It was the day after the full moon and by the time we were on our ferry across the bay the moon was up and its light glistened off the water like diamonds dancing on the waves. We arrived back in Ernakulam a while later – both of us physically and mentally drained from our experience with fame. We passed an Indian wedding, just getting started, on our walk home, and when I asked Rich if he wanted me to see if I could get us invited I got a hearty “No!” from him. I think we’d both had enough fame for one day. Not that it was bad in any respect – just different and we weren’t really prepared for that large a reaction on the locals’ part.
It was incredible to actually learn what it feels like to be famous; yet another thing I’d learned while on this trip. I had a fabulous time and now I know what a movie star or a politician feels like being famous. It was our lesson in fame. I guess it’s another facet of the world / life which I hadn’t fully understood until placed in a first hand situation where I got to experience it. Now I’ve learned about it and am better prepared for my next dose – there’s got to be another one coming up somewhere soon!
Tuesday 16th February 1993, Indian Express (Newspaper) –
Desert Festival
BHUJ (TOINS): Large scale preparations are on for the second ‘Kutch Utsau’ festival which will begin on Wednesday at Gangaba middle school here. A “Sanskruti Yatra” consisting of decorated camels, bullock carts and the police band will be taken out after inaugural function of the four-day festival.
Cochin, Kerala, Karnataka – Woke up at 11 o’clock and the first words out of my mouth were “too many drugs.” My brain was mush from the night before and we had learned that you could take one hit and then put it out anymore in your history.
We left our room in time for lunch and just wandered around Ernakulam. We did see an absolutely horrible 1979 film called . . . something . . . starring Art Garfunkle of Simon & Garfunkle. Art you should have just stucked to playing the guitar because you are a horrible actor.
 We went to dinner, then went into one of the residential sections of town to this man’s house. Mr. Devan is an Indian man who puts on a Keralan Kathakali dance exhibition on every night upon his roof terrace. Kathakali dancing is the acting out of various scenes from the Hindu religious epics. The dancing is rich in tradition, as is every facet of the event itself. There is great care put into the face makeup of the dancers and watching them being made up reminded me of seeing the actors from cats being made up. It is that intricate.
We arrived on the roof at 6:30 p.m. after handing over 50 rupees in time to see one of the dancers being made up. Once it got dark, Mr. Devan, the director and instructor gave us a lecture about Hinduism and the Kathakali dancing. Shortly thereafter, the dancing began. The only instruments being a large drum and a pair of mini cymbals. The costumes were so intricate and colorful and the dancing not half bad. Rich leaned over to me half way through, and asked if the entire thing was improvised. Good question because sometimes it certainly looks like it. After a round of speech, we shook Mr. D’s hand and headed back to our hotel.
Cochin, Kerala, India – We arrived in Cochin, actually its sister city called Ernakulam and booked ourselves into the Biju tourist home, great hotel. Now the Cochin area is almost exactly like San Francisco bay area. We were in Ernakulam, which is like staying in Berkley relative to San Francisco or Cochin. There is even a “treasure island” complete with naval base, right in the middle of the bay, plus the “bay bridge”, goes right through the middle of it. Insert graphic from journal.
After dumping our stuff in the room, we headed over to the Indian Coffee House, which is a cooperative, run by the coffee workers. They serve the best cold coffee I have ever tasted along with some snacks for you to munch one. Little did I know that the India Coffee House would have satellite cafes all over Kerala. After our snack, we jumped on the public bus across Cochin’s version of the bay bridge to Cochin city proper. The first thing that struck me about the bus was the fact that it had no windows and it was about 87 degrees outside. It is hot and a fresh breeze flowing through the bus would be a perfect solution, right. Open the window, right. In Malawi, when it was 98 degrees, they were closing the windows, Egypt too. All of a sudden in India, the anti-logic capital of the world, someone had enough good sense to design a public transport vehicle without windows, designed for a 98-degree climate. It is too logical and too easy, that is why I was so taken aback by the simplicity of the whole thing, plus if the sun is shining on you through the open space where the window usually is, you got the option of pulling down the green canvas shade which blocks the sun off your own but still lets a little air through, amazing.
Our bus arrived in Cochin a short while later and we began to walk around this quaint ex-Portuguese port city. The streets were all really narrow with palm trees bowing out over them and all the walls and doors are painted with a different color. The Keralans are so friendly. We had tons of people saying hello and talking to us as we made our way through the back streets of Cochin. We wandered into a section of the city called Jew Town, know for its Jewish population in addition to the abundance of spices being packaged for shipment. The smells of the ginger and the other spices waves through the air adding that perfect extra touch to your senses, which are already preoccupied from taking in quaintness and beauty of Cochin. We walked through Jew Town until we found the Jewish synagogue at the northern end of the town. The synagogue is the oldest one in the commonwealth with the Jewish community who uses it dating back to 52 AD. The synagogue itself was built in 1568, making it 425 years old and it is still in excellent condition.
 After having a look through the temple, we walked through more of the city until we hit the water on the northern side. This was the side where all of the Chinese fishing nets are placed and seeing as it was late in the afternoon, the fishermen were just beginning their work again. The Chinese fishing nets consist of a huge square net suspended on the end of a large lever out over the water. Imagine a pier out over the water and set into the length of the pier at the center with a huge lever capable of lowering large objects down into the water. The fishermen all live together and throw the huge lever up sending the net down into the water, but if the net is in the water, it is not the end of the lever 8 feet up above the men’s head at a 45 degree angle, yes you are correct and how do they pull the net out of the water when it is full of fish. Tied to the end of the elevated lever are no less than six pieces of rope. In addition to another six pieces, all with large rocks tied onto them to counterbalance the weight of the net. At the head fisherman’s word, the men all grab a rope and pull on it as quickly as possible, thereby trapping as many fishes as possible when the net is lifted back out of the water. Another fishermen empties the net. Then the net is dropped once again and the whole process repeated over and over.
Rich and I sat there watching the fishermen when one of the local boys started talking to Rich and explained that the jay fay was in the bushes near us, meaning Rich could buy some marijuana. Rich went off with the kid and upon their return the boy told us we could get fresh seafood just down the shore there.
Curious, we followed him down to a shack where the fishermen have all of their catches on display, lobsters, fish, and shrimp. You name it and it was here. Fish was 40 rupees, a lobster would run you 70 rupees, and half a kilo of shrimp was 70 rupees or $2 and 80 cents. We purchased a half kilo of some rather large prawns, then headed across the grass over to the man with the sign saying “you buy it, I cook it.” We gave him a shrimp and for another 20 rupees or 80 cents, he cleaned, spiced, and cooked up our shrimp for us, nice, cheap, and elegant snack. After the snack, we hung out taking pictures of the nets at sunset. It was rather a spectacular site.
Back to the room that evening to see what the jay fay brought us, we had smoked a little more than half of one joint and both of us were floored to the point we could not move plus it was not like we were sleepy, total headrush city. Both of us thought we were on something much stronger than the jay fay could provide. Rich couldn’t deal so I pulled it together enough to go down the street to the Portuguese bakery to get a cookie or something but in my altered state after ordering six cookies, and everything looked so good, I asked the shop owner to just give me two of everything in the store.I arrived back in the room with this huge box of western cookies and pastries and Rich literally could not believe it. First, I’d gone out to deal with India in our condition, and second, I found some of the most delicious sweets we’d had in a while.
After having had tons, this was definitely the strongest pot I had ever had and I could not stay awake past 8 o’clock.
Bangalore, Karnataka, India – We checked out of the hotel leaving our bags behind and headed over to the British Library, the twin to the USIA to catch up on world events. We had taken a rickshaw over there, but he took us in these out of the way loops to make the meter run longer. Upon our arrival, we flat out refused to pay the amount on the meter and offered what it should have cost, 8 rupees. The driver would have nothing to do with that. So, Rich got the map out and outlined to the cop, the roundabout route we had taken and then the cop started cutting into the driver for trying to screw the tourists. We ended up giving the driver what we had originally offered, only he gotten a verbal spanking from the cop on top of it. One small victory for the foreigners.
We made it to the library where we sat all day long, reading everything. I read every economist printed since I had left London in October while Rich found some philosophy book to read. Four and a half hours later, we left and went back to the hotel to gather our belongings and headed over to the train station. We were off to Cochin in a few hours. We left the hotel for the station, but I managed to lose Rich during the 10-minute walk over to the station. I looked everywhere for him, even going all the way back to the hotel, but I eventually just went to the station. 10 minutes before the train was to depart, I found our carriage with Rich standing outside of it, imagine that. We boarded the train and went to sleep hoping that journey would be uneventful.
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