Alappuzha-Ooty (Sam)

(Sam)

Alappuzha

From Ammas Asham, we took the ferry to Alappuzha, the backwater hub. There are lots of people who will try to get you to buy a trip on a houseboat designed like a traditional rice barge. It comes with a driver, a cook and an assistant. They are suppose to be very relaxing but they are expensive. We figured that we would get bored and it seems a bit awkward to be going past people who have nothing in a luxurious houseboat. Instead, we spent 2 days exploring the city. I have no clue how they fit the 300,000 residents in the city because it is no larger than Brandon and has few buildings over three storeys tall. We found a few good restaurants, including our favourite, the Indian Coffee House, an extremely crowded one called “Thaff” that served an all you can eat thali, a more upscale place called “Kreme Korner”, and one called “Mushroom” whose tomato fry was to die for. Our accommodation was two little cottages or “heritage homes”. The employees were a small group of laid back 20 year olds who could not clean to save their lives and were far to cheap to hire a cleaner. Cleaning our room consisted of sweeping the deck, that's all. They didn't even change the sheets. Whenever we walked past them they were sitting outside drinking liqueur and playing cards. There were many empty liqueur bottles around that were used as planters.

Kochi

We are now in Fort Cochin, a wonderfully serene city with a long and prosperous history of trading and colonialism, It is one of the few places where you can see a church, a synagogue, a mosque, a hindu temple and a jain temple all within walking distance of each other. Today we had cold curry with perotta and appam for breakfast and then we went to the Mattencherry area to see a palace and Jew town. The palace was interesting, the best parts were the incredibly intricate murals, unfortunately photos were banned.

The past few days I have been noticing a distinctly Indian way of phrasing things. For example, today I saw a pop bottle and instead of saying “tonic water” it said “sweetened aerated water”. Also on an ad for a t-shirt it said, “For youth who still activily engaged in harmony with the sun and nature”. A school bus is now an “Educational institution bus”. The other day I saw a strange sign about adopting stray dogs, it said “Why would you buy a Dashdund, Poodle, or Labrador? When you can have them all! Adopt an all-in one stray dog today! Another thing that is interesting about India is the livestock that roams the streets, there are goats, chickens, cows, oxen and the usual cats, dogs and rats. I am sure that they must become quite the obstacle whilst driving.

Kochi - Ooty

Yesterday we went east into the hills of the western ghats, as the train drove along the scenery became more and more arid and huge hills started to loom in the background, by the end of four hours there was not a palm tree in sight. We took a bus to Mettupalayam, the starting point for the toy train to Ooty. When I say toy train I mean narrow gauge (width of the tracks), not a train that little children play with. Today my dad and I woke up at 5 AM because the train was fully booked and we did not have tickets therefore we had to line up and hope that there was someone who canceled or that they left a quota of seats empty for last minute travellers. There was already a line up of 6 or so people at the station master's office when we arrived, including Robert and Henriquez our friends from Quebec and Spain who we can't stop running into. It turns out that our general itineraries for the next couple of weeks are nearly the same. Anyways, they told us we had to go and buy a waiting list ticket at the ticket office on the other side of the tracks. We ran across only to be told we needed a slip of paper from the station master as well. We went back across and got that and then returned to the ticket office triumphant with our paper from the station master, Of course When we tried to pay the fee with a 500 Rs bill we were told that we needed a smaller denomination, so I had to run over and borrow some change from Robert and Henriquez. With our waiting list ticket in hand, we went to get Mhari and Mom. The waiting list, it turns out, has no order so when we got back the 5:45 train from Chennai (that used to be Madras in case your wondering) had arrived and there were at least 30 people in the queue. The waiting list has no order so I don't understand why they even do it, if all that matters is where you are in the queue. Luckily for us it turns out that most of the train was unreserved anyways and there were seats for most of those waiting. We were put in a compartment with a nice English couple and an Indian couple who thought that my miming of the big Trivandrum poori (crispy, oily puffed-up pancake thing, hard to explain try googling it) was the most hilarious thing they had ever seen. The husband was so impressed he even shook my hand!

The train journey was absolutely stunning. 46 km in 6 hours through spectacular mountain passes, forests and tea plantations. For the first half of the journey we were pushed up by a steam engine, in the second half we were pushed by a diesel engine. The first half of the journey took 5 hours, and the second took 1 hour, although to be fair the first half was steeper. At one of the stations where we stopped for 15 minutes, the platform was full of monkeys who were running around looking for food. They were quite brave around humans and they were very hilarious.

When we arrived in Ooty we walked to our hotel of choice and got a huge room for a reasonable price. That evening we went to the lake and also went to the Thread Garden. On the sign it proclaimed that it was an art miracle, a garden of flowers made entirely of thread with no use of needles whatsoever! The optimistic adverts made us curious so we bought the 10 Rs entrance ticket and went in to find out what all the hype was about. It turns out that it was 3-D cardboard flower cutouts that were wrapped in thread. It also said that it took 50 artists over 12 years to create, which, as the Lonely Planet book says, is either very impessive, or kinda sad. It was well worth the entrance fee just to see it.

Ooty

Yesterday we went walking, bussing, jeeping and auto-rickshawing in and around Ooty. We started off by going to Dodabeta Peak, the highest peak in the Nilgiri Hills. It was very touristy up there, but the views were good and we remembered that it was Republic Day, the Indian equivalent of Canada day. We walked down the mountain and went to the tea factory and museum. Unfortunately it was not a production day, but there was a decently executed exhibit on the history of tea. We bought a big bag of delicious cardamon tea. We walked down a forest path to get back into town but halfway down it stopped and we had to ask a group of young boys how to get into town. They took us through their yards and down the dirt paths running through their cramped residential neighbourhood. After that close up view on day to day Indian life we wandered through the fruit and veg market to the botanical gardens. Being Republic day, everybody was out in the gardens and they were all feeling very chatty. We meet an Indian man working in Paris as a Japanese chef, a student who wanted Dad to find him a job in Canada and took about 200 pictures of us and various other people. There was also a dog who followed us wherever we went.

Today, we went on an all-day trek through the Nilgiri Hills. We saw lots of tea plantations, Eucalyptus trees and climbed up a mountain that had the most incredible views ever. We had a thali for lunch in a small town and there were 4 dogs that came with us up the mountain so as to get their daily biscuits from our guide. Our guide's name was Anthony and he had been leading the same trek for 16 years. He had quite the system going with the locals, in exchange for being allowed to pass through their property, he gave them various things, usually it was just sweets for their children (all the kids waited for us to come by) although at a few places that were different. The trek was a great way to get out of the city and the it was great to clean the pollution out of my lungs.