Kerala

Photos are here - realised now how useful a netbook would be as for the last 3 weeks internet has either been really expensive or non existant...

India Ooty - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=174039&id=771224918&l=9838f957e1

India Kerala - http://www.facebook.com/album.php?aid=174050&id=771224918&l=82374a9259

I did waver a bit about staying in Mysore as I did like the place but in the end I dragged my carcus down to the bus station - naturally the Ooty bus didn't leave from the stand it was supposed to and I did feel sorry for the driver as he was trying to park up people were trying to clamber on and throwing stuff through the windows - totally crazy as I usually managed to get a seat by just waiting till everyone had finished fighting it out. The bus did struggle a bit as it climbed up into the Nilgiri or Blue Mountains - it was a strange countryside full of tea plantations and in parts the countryside looked very English with rolling hills and trees but with Indian shacky houses.

My arrival in Ooty (real name Udhagamandalam - I prefer Ooty much simpler) was quite calm - no touts which was great but I did struggle to find a nice cheap hotel. The first one was really nice but I could only stay one night as they were doing it up - the TTDC guesthouse looked grim and was 600 rupees, when my mouth dropped at that they practically threw me out shouting "go the youth hostel" so I ended up back at the first one which was so lovely with fluffy pillows and a soft mattress. Ooty was strange place a former British hill station which was now full of shops selling home made chocolate (Yes!!!) and tea - apparently there was still a bit of British influence right up until the 1970's but not so much nowadays.

Spent the following morning looking at hotels - some were dire, some were expensive and some I couldn't be arsed to hoof my bag across town - the rickshaw drivers wouldn't haggle which is never a good sign - so I ended up in a dire one which I'm sure looked very nice when some bigwig opened it in 1964 unfortunately they didn't seem to have done much work on the room since then. Spent the afternoon looking round St Stephens church which was a bit like the one at Shimla but smaller and I thought much cuter. I always find the wall plaques so interesting - one guy died of jungle fever and another was for a lady who died aged thirty leaving a husband and seven children "to deplore their irreparable loss". It did feel like being back in England walking through the graveyard and it was nice in a weird way to see that people were still being buried there - though they no longer had such English sounding names. The Botanical Gardens were another bit of England - originally designed by the people from Kew - they were still well maintained with lots of varieties of trees and glasshouses and amazingly for India not a lot of litter about.

I had originally come to Ooty to ride on the Blue Mountain Railway and then completely forgot that a landslide a couple of months previously had knocked out most of the line - part of it was back up running but it looked really complicated and I don't really do complicated if I can help it so it was a case of going down to the bus station to try and find a bus to Coimbatoire. Looked simple enough but nothing is straightforward in India - you stand at the Coimbatoire stand which says bus every 20 minutes - 45 minutes passes and no bus shows so you ask someone at 10 to 5 "how often are the buses?" - "Every half hour", "What time's the next one then?" "Half past five" - mmh that makes a lot of sense!! I sussed it had arrived when everybody hurtled across the concourse and started throwing stuff through the windows - anyway here's a bit of video from the rollercoaster ride down through the plantations:

Bus conductor was ever so nice even moving one lad as I was getting blowback from his spit and vomit through the open door and once in Coimbatoire he offered to take me and the hockey lads from Trichur down to the railway station for 5 rupees which saved me a lot of arguments over what would have been a rip off fare.

Spent the next few days in Varkala where I met up with Richard again who had travelled down there via the backwaters and a really dodgy hotel in Allepney - found a lovely place to stay Sherin Cottage which was run by a great guy Deepak from Nepal. Was a real chill out few days spent mostly on the beach - the body boarding was great - nearly went to see to the Hugging Mama Amma but then she went on her travels and I had heard the westerners there were a bit on the weird side - trying to do outdo each other spiritually and crying a lot. It was a really friendly place - I always think that just having one table where everyone has sit round is better - one of the funniest moments was when Dave from Vermont turned up one morning bleary eyed and T-shirt inside out with tales of skinny dipping on Black Beach with 6 Aussie girls "awesome" he said. Sad day when I had to leave - Richard had already headed back up north to Rajastan it had been really nice to see him again - and I was heading south to see a solar eclipse.

Kerala was the best place in India to see the eclipse - was hoping to go back to Kanyukumari but it was just too complicated with the buses and trains to get there for time when the eclipse was at his height. Ended up staying in Trivandirum at one of strangest hotels I've ever stayed at regarding rules - two pages of them primarily concerned with bed wetting, vomiting and sheet staining - maybe its a hotbed for such goings on in this part of India. I did have the bright idea to try and sort my rail ticket from Chennai to Puri by going down to the station early to avoid the crowds - ha ha you can never do that in India according to the cheese counter ticket system there were 360 people in front of me in the queue - and this was at 8 in the morning - bit of a wait then!!! Finally got to the front of the queue and promptly lost my ticket - you can't put anything down as I found out when some bloke barged past me with said ticket "think that's mine matey" he didn't argue...

Spent the day of the eclipse at Kovalum Beach which you see in all the travel brochures - it was worse than I expected just too many hotels rammed into a small area - in my 1990 edition of the Lonely Planet it sounds like paradise but now has just been ruined. Got scammed for a bit of eclipse glass - bit dissappointed it didn't get totally dark as it was only an annular eclipse but the birds did get confused and I said a lot of wow's when looking through my glass - the next one in this part of the world to be this long will be in 3043 long after I'm gone. Had one of the crappest meals ever of pakoras - I seriously think the guy had just swept the kitchen floor and dumped the scraps on my plate and beer in a mug just doesn't taste the same. Anyway here's a bit of video I did my best with my camera but don't get your hopes up.

Okay that's all for the minute - got good internet connection here in Lake Toba so maybe some more before the weekend - I am just so behind with this.