I appologize for how long it has been since I posted anything. It’s been a lot tougher than expected to sit down in front of a computer for longer than the length of time it takes to book a flight or check my email. However, in greeting the new year, I have had to say goodbye to my friends from IIT who have been my traveling buddies for the last month as they had to return to IIT for the second semester. Now I am officially traveling “alone” and suddenly have the urge to get back to the internet more often.

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My trip around the south has been fantastic and in the month I have been moving around I feel like I've seen so much but have still had plenty of time to relax. It's been a perfect vacation after a tough push at the end of the semester and an unforgettable experience that I'm so lucky to have had. If anyone out there ever has a chance to come to India, DO IT! seriously! It's incredibly cheap to travel here, and there is so much to see and do. You do have to be willing to put up with a lot of shit, but once you submit yourself to the events as they unfold, you will have an incredible time.

So, what have I been doing you ask? Well, let me tell you. I apologize for this all being very rushed, but I'd rather just get it out now and put up my photos than wait too long. In the future I'll try to actually blog more often in the middle of things so I actually have more to say. Enjoy.

Cochin (Kochi) – wiki

Flew into Kochi to go and meet my friends. They had already been traveling around the south in the East and in south central India. Kochi is a very touristy spot and doesn’t have much to do besides go to expensive restaurants (which are pretty nice). The problem with these touristy places is that you hate it because it’s so touristy and expensive compared to normal Indian places, but they really do know exactly what kind of stuff us westerners like so it’s hard to resist. Anyway I didn’t really do anything in Kochi besides meet up with my friends and move on. The main attraction there is called “Jew Town” (seriously) and is an old Jewish quarter surrounded by a market. I skipped it…

Allupey (Alappuzha) - wiki

From South India Adventures

Allupey is also super touristy and the reason to go there is to stay on a houseboat in the “backwaters” of Kerala. It really is a beautiful place, but the houseboats are these massive floating luxury hotels. Not exactly what you imagine when you hear about the backwaters. It’s quite expensive ($20-$40/night with everything included) and apparently if you want to experience the real deal, you gotta go somewhere else and contact a local person and go on a small boat where you actually have to help the guy push through the water with poles. We were a group of 8 so we had to go with a big boat. We did turn down one boat that had leather couches, and a giant dance floor upstairs in favor of a smaller, more modest boat that was still way too nice. Anyway, you go on the boat for about 24 hours, they cook you delicious seafood and you cruise around the rivers and lounge on the sun-deck. It’s pretty great, but only after you accept the fact that what you’re on a luxury floating hotel. We picked coconuts, drank local coconut alcohol, went swimming at sunset, drank lots of rum, went swimming in the middle of the night, and did a lot of reading.

Munnar - wiki

From South India Adventures

Munnar is a hillstation surrounded by tea fields. The tea fields are stunning and we rented scooters and motorcycles to go exploring in the area. Theres no better way to see the mountains than on a bike. It was probably one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. While exploring we drove into a random village and made friends with a bunch of little kids. They were super cute and gave Gabi a bouqet of fresh flowers. We also went to a tea museum and a tea tasting to taste 30 kinds of tea. At the museum, they showed a video about the tea company that made it seem like the cheeriest, happiest place to work on earth. While it does seem fairly nice now (its worker owned and the living standards seem fairly good for India) somehow I have my doubts about its rosy history.

Kannur – wiki

From South India Adventures

Michael and I split off and went North on our own. We went to Kannur, a somewhat quiet coastal town that Michael had heard was nice and not too touristy. We had no idea what to expect and when we arrived, were not too happy. It seemed like a fairly crappy beach and nowhere to stay. We wandered up the beach in the dark after having dinner, hoping to find at least one hotel. The wandered up to the first place with lights on and it had a sign that looked like a hotel or something and asked if there were any hotels nearby. It was actually a homestay run by a retired Swedish man that was amazing. He said we were really lucky to stumble onto the place because he doesn’t advertise at all and it’s usually word of mouth that sends people there. We had bicycles to use, a kitchen, a BBQ, and a fairly empty clean beach, so we stayed a few days and just chilled out and read. We also went to see a south Indian temple ritual and wandered around the fishing villages. There were some other guests staying in another building next to us, another older retired swedish couple, and a traveling British couple. All very nice folks and a very relaxing place to stay. I don’t want to advertise the name here, but contact me if you’re interested.

Thrissur (BOO!)

On the way to Mysore, Michael and I stopped in a random town called Thrissur. We arrived quite late, and Michael was sick so first we headed to the hospital. When it was time to find a room, we wandered around, only to discover that every place was full because a company had booked 1000 rooms for some company event. It was terrible luck, but eventually a nice guy said a friend of his had a place with some rooms left and gave us a ride there. It was more expensive than our usual budget but it was a place to stay anyway. We tried the next morning to go see the temple in the middle of town but a sign outside said “only Hindus allowed inside the temple”. They probably meant inside the inner part of the temple, but we were tired of that place anyway so we left.

Mysore - wiki

In Mysore, a bunch of companies offer these tours of the whole city. Basically for 100something rupees you see most of the sights in the city. Since I had lost our guidebook and it was pretty cheap, we went for it. It’s an all day affair (8am to 8pm) and it involves a LOT of waiting, as do most Indian things, but once you submit yourself to it and just enjoy, it was pretty good. The palace (built by the Raj fairly recently) is stunning, and we saw some things we would not have otherwise, like the zoo, an art museum, some random temples, and the end of the trip included the MUSICAL FOUNTAIN!!! WOOOO! basically a lightshow / fountain synched with terrible pop music from 1995. It was really entertaining, because the crowd there was going absolutely wild… for the entire time… It was really funny to see which little fountain tricks would make everyone get excited again.  The next day, we met back up with the rest of the group to continue on to Hampi.

Hampi - wiki

From South India Adventures

Hampi is a town with a huge complex of ruins and temples. As a whole, its pretty impressive, but when you actually walk up to each temple, its just a little stone room with nothing in it. It gets very old, very fast. We really weren’t in the mood when we arrived, probably because we had just been on an all night public bus trip (you don’t sleep much on these trips, and sitting in the front row, you get a good view of how close the bus comes to hitting everything around it all the time). We pretty much skipped the temple but quickly discovered that across the river is a really quiet Goa-style enclave of super-chilled-out hotels and cafes and whatnot. It’s another of these very touristy towns that is just not India, but is so comfortable and nice to stay in. You can get all the pastries, real coffee, good italian/israeli/mexican food you want, the hotels are cheap, and there are lots of nice western people around to talk to. Also there is a huge lake to go swimming in and some nice temples up on the rocks to go exploring. We rented bikes and rode around through the rice fields.

Goa: Anjouna Beach

Goa is supposed to be super crowded and expensive during the peak season, and the peak week is christmas to new years. We had already reserved a place online so we had fairly cheap accommodations so we went anyway. We stayed at the Anjouna Palms guesthouse which was really nice and run by a great family. I highly recommend it if you’re going to Anjouna. It really wasn’t that crowded and its the busiest party time of the year. It was really a let down as we were expecting a lot more people and bigger parties but it was still good enough. We did find lots of other people wandering around at night looking for parties as well though. There must be some secret raves going on that we just didn’t know about. So Anjouna is pretty nice. Its very touristy, very western, pretty expensive, but probably one of the only places in India where western girls can go swimming in bikinis without too much hassle. The market on thursdays is pretty cool, although overwhelmingly large. We quickly developed a routine of lounging on the beach, drinking all day, and then going out to party at night. Curlies and Lilliput were the only real places to go out at night and some nights they were awesome, and some totally awful. Overall the time there was nice, but it gets old pretty quick. Michael and I rented a bike and went exploring and discovered that the beaches more south were absolutely horrible and overcrowded. More north seemed quiet and very pretty.

Goa: Arambol – wiki

From South India Adventures

Arambol is more north, and is a much less crowded beach full of mostly westerners. Theres lots of people staying for long periods doing yoga and meditation and the like. The touristy thing there also get old fast, but its a place I could see myself going for a long period if I had some project to work on. Life here consisted of fresh fruit salad/meusli/curd for breakfast, drinking cocktails in the middle of the day, swimming in the ocean whenever we wanted, and eating a lot of seafood. Its a rough life… We made friends with this one guy who made pina coladas inside fo fresh coconuts. I made him some signs in return for some drinks… We also quickly discovered that restaurants were very willing to let us sleep on their mats with their workers if we just had a meal there. So for the next week, we stopped paying for hotels and slept on the beach. One night we also headed further north to an even quieter beach and made a fire to sleep next to. It was really too easy to just stay there and maintain the status quo. New years was a bit of a bust though since we were hoping for at least one decent party but found none. We decided to head down to Anjouna way too late so we had to stay. The only bonus was the huge number of rich Russians who bought loads of fireworks to set off at midnight. Eventually my friends had to head north to get back to school so I stayed behind. Immediately I made friends with some really nice people and discovered the joys of traveling alone.

Mumbai – wiki

From South India Adventures

I headed to Mumbai on a general class train (that means realllllly crowded) but luckily had some traveling mates in some british and swedish kids who were at the station with me. The first hour and a half turned into a ridiculous sing-a-long. We had guitars and were coerced into playing for them. Thinking of songs we all knew and that some Indian people would know was kind of amusing. At one point I suggested “country roads” and a bunch of the Indian people knew the chorus. strange. Mumbai turned out to be a great city. I really like it more than Delhi since it actually feels like a city. Its much easier to get around since theres a nice metro and its just organized in a way you can actually walk around. Theres lots of nice restaurants and actually some cafes where you can just sit and relax for a while. I was lucky enough to have a friend of a friend to stay with which made my stay much cheaper and more enjoyable. I met some of her friends who are mostly Bollywood writers and really nice people.

I also met this very interesting character named Terrance Alan Bradley (youtube) who is an educated, entertaining, functional alcoholic who hates most Indian people. When we met he was totally drunk, but still managed to convince me to go on his “mind blowing real mumbai tour experience” for 2 days to go see the slums and some other “crazy” places in the “real” Mumbai. It was fun but the days ended with us both drunk and him fighting with me to tip him. I sensed he really did need the money and he was a very genuine and nice guy so I helped him out a bit. The slums were quite cool and had a really nice vibe to them. I think it’s because they are very expensive to live in so its mostly middle class people from around India who move there. The kids all go to school, and I think generally people are trying to work their way up in the world instead of just being beggars. I also got my ears pierced with 5mm gauges and bought 3 pairs of awesome glasses.

Jaipur – wiki

From South India Adventures

Due to my lack of planning, all the trains were booked so I had to go through Jaipur for a day. I had no guidebook and no idea of what there was to do and see in Jaipur. It makes arriving in a city very difficult since you have to just trust one of the rickshaw driver / touts who assail you at the railway station. After a few hours of walking around and being stared down so hard because of my ridiculous appearance (bright pink sweater, ridiculous glasses, pierced ears/nose, beard, jew-fro) I eventually found a place to stay. I actually just stayed in my room for the next 2 hours watching tv because I didnt want to go outside… Eventually I summoned up the strength and went exploring. Without a guidebook I just wandered around looking for the sights (or a bookshop so I could look at a guidebook). I found nothing. It was really frustrating, and while wandering around Indian cities used to be cool and exciting, I’m pretty over it by now. One nice thing though was that the kite festival was going on so the entire sky was full of kites in every direction. Eventually I was just tired so I sat down by a fountain in the middle of the old city. Then I spotted “puppet man” who I had met before in Pushkar and my friends had met before that on a previous trip to Jaipur. I pointed at him and screamed “puppet man!” He didn’t recognize me at first but soon realized who I was. We had a chai and he took me a textile shop because I mentioned I was looking for some presents. Then he took me to his house to see his collection of old puppets. He treated me to a fish dinner and some beer and was really a great host. I obliged and bought the puppet that I had previously refused in Pushkar. It’s truly beautiful but I still feel a little ridiculous that I spent so much money on a puppet. It is a piece of art though and I will have it for many years to come. Besides you could never buy something like that in the US for anywhere near what I got it for.

Back in Delhi

Now I am back in Delhi enjoying spending some time with my friends again. They now have a flat which should greatly improve the quality of their lives. I have been cooking for them a lot and besides the cold and the lack of internet, am extremely happy staying there. Now I just have to get some work done, send home a parcel of all the junk I’ve accumulated, and pay my tuition and I will move on to Varanasi to study tabla. Originally I was hoping to go for about a month and now it’s looking like it will be only 2 weeks, but it should be a cool experience either way.