Matt and I discovered the goodness of the South Indian breakfast.  It all started in Bangalore.  (Which isn’t actually in Kerala.)  We arrived early in the morning and, much to our chagrin, every restaurant we came across was closed until 9 or 10am.  It was 7:30.  Luckily, we didn’t have to wait too much longer to eat because while the next hotel we inquired at didn’t have a vacancy, at least it had a restaurant that was open for business.  We set our bags down on the floor and sat down to order.

Rule #1: No menus

There was no menu, so we asked our barefoot waiter what the restaurant was serving for breakfast. The good places, the ones where there are just locals, don’t have menus. Or if they do, it’s a sign posted on the wall in loopy script that is indecipherable to our western eyes. This makes it necessary to ask what’s for breakfast. The waiter will list off a few options, or maybe just one if it’s a small restaurant. “Dosas, idly, uppom” our waiter said. We each ordered a masala dosa—a big, crepe-like pancake (a little crispier) rolled around warm potatoes and onions with a small bowls of masala and coconut chutney on the side. The masala is not a thick sauce, though it does have small chunks of tomatoes and onion in it. I like to open up the dosa and pour the sauce over the potatoes. The masala seeps into the potatoes and dosa, making it more pliable and easier to eat.

Rule #2: Eat with your hand

We were sitting in the upstairs AC section of a restaurant when I learned how to really eat with my hands. Looking through the tableside window into the downstairs section of the restaurant, I observed locals pouring saucy curries and veggies over platefuls of rice, then eating with their right hand. So how does one eat rice and curry without getting sauce all over your hand? The secret is: you don’t. Of course it gets messy. Meal time isn’t for daintily picking up a few grains of rice with the sauce strategically placed away from your finger tips, nor is it a time to artfully wrap a small piece of chapatti around a chunk of potato. Meal time is more about just going for it. The sauce and your fingers will meet. There’s no need to go for a napkin in between bites because the next will just coat your skin with curry all over again. (Just be sure to wash your hands before and after you eat—that’s what the wash basin in the corner of every restaurant is for.) Once I really learned how to eat without a utensil, it made eating those masala dosas easier and more enjoyable.

Rule #3: Know your breads

It is generally a good thing to know what types of food are offered where you will be traveling.  This knowledge serves as a starting framework for a new cuisine, and makes ordering so much easier.  In India, and many other places I’m sure, I’ve found it difficult to get a clear idea of what new dishes are from the waiter’s description.  “ Saucy, with Indian spices,” is the usual response I get when inquiring about a dish.  So anyways, if you should happen to go to one of those hole-in-the-wall, no-menu type places the next time you are in Kerala (soon, right?), it is a good thing to know your breads.

Dosa—made from chickpea flour. This one is a masala dosa.

Porota—our favorite discovery. This bread has several flaky layers but is slightly chewy in texture and always delicious.

Idly—made from fermented rice (I think…). These ones are part of a packaged meal we bought on the train.

If you’re like us, you may not be able to catch all the other options—masala, channa, veg curry, etc. but at least you can say: “Dosa” or “Porota” with confidence, and the waiter will just bring an accompanying dish to go with the bread. And in the restaurants where they only make one dish each day, the bread is the only choice you’ll have to make. That, and black tea, or chai?

Rule #4: Follow the locals

For a good breakfast, or any meal for that matter, it is good to look for the crowds.  Where are all the other people eating?  A busy restaurant generally means two things: the food is tasty, and (hopefully) the food should be fresher because its being eaten before it has time to go bad.  The other important thing to look for is: where are all the Indians eating?  Matt and I asked ourselves this question one day in Kovalam as we were sitting at a restaurant along the beach front.  There were a few other people in the restaurant, but like the other places we’d passed along the way, none of the patrons were Indians.  But we had seen dozens of Indian tourists on the beach.  So where did they all eat?  Finally we discovered the location of all the good food, up a hill by the local bus stand.  We were relieved to have solved the mystery of where the Indians ate, now we could feast on our beloved porotas again (they weren’t even offered at the places we’d been eating).  In addition to the availability of the porota, a local joint (often called “hotel” rather than restaurant) generally means there will be cheap food—at least cheaper than the tourist-oriented restaurants that line the main strip of each of the beaches we visited.  It goes without saying that cheap is a good thing when you’re on a budget, but compared to the mid-range* restaurants frequented almost exclusively by foreign tourists, we liked the taste of the food at the cheaper* ones better (*no expensive restaurants were included in this study).  Case in point: on our last day in Kerala before heading to the airport, Matt and I went to one of the hotel up the hill for a quick breakfast.  As we crested the top of the hill the road we were walking on merged with another.  We came upon a group of twenty local blokes sporting their button-up dress shirts and longhis.  Wondering where they we headed, we quickened our pace as we realized they were headed the same place as us: where the locals eat.

For all intensive purposes, our time in India is up. After the Maldives, we’ll pass through on our way to Nepal and then again on our way to Thailand. But even the aggregate of that time will be short and it will be mainly transitory anyhow. With India largely over, the inevitable question is “How would I rate our time here?” To answer that question, I’ll have to look back at the three objectives I had for this portion of the itinerary.

· Introduce Joylani to more of India than Delhi and Rajasthan (which she had already seen)

· Spend time in the regions that I wanted to explore more fully

· Visit and explore a few new places

Goal 1: Unlike some other countries that we’ve visited so far, I’m not writing about whether or not I like India or whether we’ll return. The fact that we’re both visiting for the second time should answer the first question and the fact that we have 10 year visas should answer the second one. Plus, I’m sure my past posts have made it clear that I fell in love with India during the six months that I lived and traveled here three years ago. When Joylani visited me back then, I showed her around Delhi for a week and then we explored Rajasthan together for a week and a half. Delhi and Rajasthan are both interesting places and quite different from one another (urban vs. rural), yet they share many similarities (ethnicity/religious makeup/language/geography/history/etc) and are both what I would call “stereotypical India” (from the western perspective).

But I think the best part of India is its ethno-religious-linguistic-geo-political-historical diversity. And I’d say that Joylani saw way more of India than she even imagined existed before. We started off with three weeks in Ladakh, a historic Buddhist kingdom nestled on the edge of the high-altitude Tibetan plateau, populated by central Asians, practicing Buddhism, and speaking Ladakhi, Hindi, or Urdu. Heading south, we spent some time in the homogenous Hindi-belt, located on the agricultural Indo-Gangetic plateau, named for its Hindi-speaking population, most of which practice Hinduism, and share in the common history of North India from the ancient Harappan (Indus Valley) Civilization through the Moghuls and British Raj. Going down the coast, we hit Goa full of Indo-Portuguese Catholics, speaking Konkan, living on the humid and jungle-covered coast, and were ruled from Lisbon for 400 of the last 450 years. Then we went to Hampi and Bangalore, on the Deccan Plateau, both of which share the Dravidian ethnicity, the Kannada language, are split between Muslim and Hindu, and can claim the rich history of the Hyderabad Sultanate. And now in Kerala, a tropical-coastal state, ethnic roots mixed between Dravidian, European, Arab, SE Asia, and anyone else that’s sailed/traded on the famed Malabar Coast for the past few millennia. They speak Malayalam, have large Hindu, Muslim, and Christian populations, and are governed by communists. And this isn’t even mentioning the smaller regions/communities we’ve passed through or the major regions we’ll be briefly visiting (Tamil Nadu and West Bengal). We’ve gone from mountain desert to tropical beaches, from fields of grains to hills covered in jungle, and tons of Buddhist monasteries, Hindu temples, Muslim mosques, and Christian cathedrals. By the end of India, we’ll have seen the four major cities and a handful of state capitols, as well as have stayed in some tiny and medium-sized villages. We’ve traveled by plane, train, metro, bus, van, jeep, car, auto-rickshaw, and bike-rickshaw. We have seen and done a ton of stuff. Its been fun to hear the things Joylani notices and learns in each new place we go, for its always fun when those closest to us enjoy the things we do. Since Ladakh, I’ve felt like my first objective of showing Joylani more of India has been met. But I knew it was complete when she quoted my dad’s oft-repeated response to people that say they don’t like a particular type of wine (“You mean you just haven’t tried a red wine you like yet”). About two weeks ago, she said to me, “If anyone tells me they don’t like India, I’m just gonna tell them they haven’t been to a part that they like yet.”

Goal 2: When I lived in Delhi three years ago, I only spent extended amounts of time in those regions within a day’s journey of the capitol (Himachal Pradesh, Uttaranchal, Rajasthan, Madhya Pradesh). But having traveled all over the subcontinent and having visited most regions at least briefly, I had a couple of regions earmarked for further exploration on this trip- Ladakh and Kerala. During the few days that I had previously spent in both regions, I was both impressed and eager to explore more. On this trip, we spent our first three weeks in Ladakh and our last three in Kerala (which account for about half of our time in India). Both states were awesome and well worth the visit, although I’d have to give Ladakh’s scenery the edge over Kerala’s tropical beaches and plethora of seafood. There remains other regions/states in India that I’ve visited and would like to further explore (mainly Kashmir, Uttaranchal, and West Bengal), but I couldn’t be more pleased with our time in Ladakh and Kerala.

Goal 3: Visiting new places was a mixed bag. For Joylani, everywhere was a new place, but that’s after I screened out a lot of places not worth going. On one hand, I really like Varkala, Bangalore, and the multi-day jeep trips we took from Leh. Hampi and Khajuraho were okay, but I definitely would have skipped Orchha. By the numbers, it appears that this objective was met relatively successfully. But in hindsight, I could have stayed less time in quite a few of these places. But on the other hand, that’s the price of visiting unknown places without any onward travel plans; the price of exploration. Orchha was like the price we paid for enjoying the other new places that we liked. We could have avoided Orchha by not visiting any new places, but then we would have missed out on Bangalore and Varkala. And if I only went to the places I thought I’d like, I would’ve said we shouldn’t go to Bangalore or Hampi (both of which I did like). Plus, we don’t always like the places we think we will (I thought Orchha would be cool). India’s a huge country and there’s still a lot of places that I’d like to visit, but I was happy with seeing the new places that we did. Exploring and visiting new places is always full of surprises and I’d have to say we’ve been fortunate to “discover” more places we liked than didn’t like. Overall, I liked seeing the new places we did.

And so, there you have my evaluation of our time in India. Joylani really got to “know” India, we spent time in and explored what I consider the two coolest parts of India, and we both explored some amazing new places. Two and a half months ago, I was hoping I could say these things when we departed India, and I am. Not just that, but overall it’s been a fun and good time. We’ve seen a ton, talked a lot and learned a lot with and from each other, and it’s also been a good way to kick-off our Asia circuit with a somewhat familiar and English-speaking country. Thus, not only must I rate our time here very highly, but give plenty of thanks for how our time in India has gone.

PS. I should note that I was also going to publish a post on all the things I dislike about India, just to give a balanced picture of the place. But I’ve decided against publishing it, since most of my frustrations/criticisms are consequences of poverty and undereducation. Granted, the undereducated and impoverished make up a majority of the population, but I feel it would be more a critique of the poor/uneducated (littering, constant pushing/shoving, male immaturity, ego/cultural/ethnocentrism, caste/class problems) than a critique of India specifically. Nonetheless, do know that India is a relatively tough place to travel (in many ways) and not perfect by any stretch of the imagination, but we’ve enjoyed it nonetheless.

If anything, our two-day stay in Kochi was educational. To get there, we left Bangalore early in the morning and arrived at the Ernakulum train station around five that evening, ten hours later. To get to the older, touristier part of Kochi we needed to catch a ferry. On the map in our guidebook the ferry terminal didn’t look too far away from the train station, so we decided to walk. Of course, this took longer than we expected but it was ok as it was fairly cool since the sun was setting and it gave me a chance to take in my first taste of Kerala. Just outside of the train station we spotted dozens of red flags, and drummers performing a synchronized routine—almost like an Indian version of a drumline. It was a parade advertising a political event for Kerala’s communist government. We walked on and finally arrived at the ferry terminal. Our fare was 5 rupees for both of us—what a deal! By this time it was dark out and we couldn’t really tell where we were going, but based off the other tourists on the boat, we figured we were headed the right direction. Disembarking from the boat we continued with the same logic and followed the “white folks” down the road towards the hotels. Eventually I made Matt stop to check the map in the guidebook to make sure we were heading in the right direction. Just then a man pulled up on his motorcycle.

“Do you need a room?” he asked, handing me a card for his homestay. Normally we dismiss anyone off the street who tries to show us a room because the room price will be higher to pay for his or her commission. This time though, we decided to go with him for a couple of reasons: 1.) it was his homestay (ie no commission), 2.) he quoted a fair price right away, 3.) the business card looked nice and the rooms looked clean, it pays to have a good graphic designer. Upon inspection, the room turned out to be ok and for the first time in India, we stopped looking after the first hotel. After a day of train, ferry, and walking, finding a room so easily was quite a relief.

Our brief stay in Kochi was unexpectedly educational. The first night we received a comprehensive overview of how long it took to walk around the old section of Kochi via the map on the back of the business card. Granted, it wasn’t a very big map, but our host was very thorough and enthusiastic. “Go this way to intersection, there’s two restaurants; one veg, one Italian. Don’t go here to this restaurant, they use old food…” Although his thoroughness took a little bit longer than usual to check into our room, it worked to our advantage as he helped us find a couple of activities during our stay in Kochi: the Katakali show and a backwater tour. We decided to go with the show the first night and take the backwater tour our second day, and then leave on the third for Varkala via KSRTC buses (Kerala State Road Transit Corporation).

Since the Katakali show didn’t start until 5:30pm, we had some time to kill, about a whole day. We walked around the shore area where we watched our next lesson: how a Chinese fishing net works.

One end has a big net, the other a bunch of weights (aka rocks tied to ropes and little fishermen). The nets would stay in the water for about 2-3 minutes and then the fishermen would use the lever to pull it back up, hurriedly gathering their catch before the birds ate it. Each net is basically a big seesaw made to catch fish. Actually, it’s probably more complex than that, the mechanics at all. But at least we got the basic idea down.

Finally the next educational part of our day came: it was time for Katakali. Katakali is a form of theater that intricately incorporates elements of music,  acting, costume, and religious stories.  The show actually begins before the performance with the actors putting on their make-up. It’s a pretty elaborate process, including pieces of paper that get pasted to the some of the actors’ faces.

Since I was completely unfamiliar with the art form, I didn’t know what the make-up was supposed to look like and each time they added a new color or line of dots (or for one guy a paper flower on the tip of his nose) was like adding another layer of ornaments and lights to a gaudy Christmas tree.

Crazy costumes completed the look, right done to long silver fingernail tips. Before the story began, one of the actors demonstrated some of the facial movements for the audience (all tourists; all taking lots of pictures). The actors don’t use words, so the facial and body movements are an important part of the story. Picture normal acting, and then picture it exaggerated with eyes blinking multiple times over to signify one emotion or another. If I was a little kid, between the crazy make-up and costumes together with the facial movements, I would probably be a little freaked out by the actors. The final thing we deduced from the performance was that it was an interesting experience but for our short attention spans at the end of the day, it could have been reduced to about 25 minutes—5 minutes to show the different stages of make-up, 10 minutes for the demonstration, and 10 minutes for a condensed version of the story. Three hours was just a little too long…

The next morning we woke up early to catch our bus to the starting point for our backwater tour. Our boat had no motor and was powered by two guys pushing the boat along with long poles.

The pushers walked up and down the sides of the boat pushing us along all day. They must have walked a few miles on that 15 foot strip of wood. With no motor, the ride was quiet and peaceful. We reclined in our rattan chairs and took in the scenery—lots of palm trees and lily pads.

Before lunch we made two stops to observe some of the local industries—coir making and calcium carbonate production. The coir is rope made from coconut husk.

Husk

Apron lady

Spinner lady

The outer portion of a coconut is soaked for 6 months to strengthen the husk. After this time it is easily removed from the shell and much stronger that before the aging/soaking process. Then these ladies gather it up in their aprons while spinning wheel lady does her thing. The apron ladies slowly walk backwards as the husk spins itself out of the aprons into strands of coir. The strands are then spun together to make the rope. At the coir stop we also learned what pepper looks like before it ends up on your table in a little shaker.

Pepper

As for the calcium carbonate (or something like that—it’s used for painting, purifying, pharmaceuticals…), this stuff is made from shells. Lots of little shells. They dry out the shells and then at the factory (a couple of sheds with a big furnace) they burn the shells until it become white powder. The finished product is packed up and shipped off.

Shells

Finished product

Calcium carbonate. There you have it. (Hopefully my explanation wasn’t too technical for you, feel free to email me for the dumbed-down version). After the educational part of the tour was over, we transferred over to a small canoe to explore some smaller channels as we waited for our lunch to finish cooking.

Canoe

Lunch

The “traditional Keralan meal” was tasty and filling; I think all the passengers returned to the boat very full. Due to the pushing, the boat ride was extremely slow-paced, and after a while the novelty of the scenery wasn’t so novel. The passengers put away their cameras, and everyone kicked back for a siesta during the final portion of our tour, waking up just in time to get off the boat for the bus ride back to Kochi.

The last interesting part of our stay in Kochi (besides seeing the same Korean couple that we’d seen in Hampi and Bangalore on our ferry ride and at the Katakali performace) was that we met 3 UC students. The first two we met sat behind us on the bus to the backwater tour. Upon hearing English spoken with an American accent, I immediately started to eavesdrop (it had been a while). It only took a few tidbits of information for me to deduce that they were UC students on EAP (the same program Matt studied abroad with 3 years ago). #1.) Explaining how a Guinness widget works by comparing it to “a lime soda like the ones they serve by school.” #2.) Talking about Magic Mountain, a theme park in Southern California. #3.) Discussing journals and how MLA is preferable to Chicago style, and wow, so and so’s research was SO interesting. The third tidbit was the cincher. Using my advanced dectective skills I already knew the girls behind us were college students from California, but no CSU student would talk about writing guidelines and research as enthusiastically as those two. (CSU alumi, I mean no offense by the previous sentence as I find discussing the pros and cons of Chicago vs MLA during a backwater tour of Kerala kind of strange myself.) They had to be from the UC system—UCLA and Cal to be exact. No wonder. The third UCer we met was also from Cal. Being a solo traveler with probably not much else to do besides eavesdrop (like myself at times), he honed into our American English and said hello. Matt doesn’t think to much of us meeting 3 UC students in one day (“We’re all over the place,” he says), but I thought it was kinda cool. It’s not everyday you meet three people from the same university system during your stay in Kochi.

With the exception of our weeklong excursion to Hampi and Bangalore, Joylani have spent the last month at the beach. If you’ll recall our first post from Goa, it was so great to get to the beach. And its been a great month since then. We’ve had a string of good guesthouses, mostly part of a familys’ home and mostly overlooking the beach/ocean. Our three weeks in Kerala has been a story of lazy days spent at the beach and tons of seafood. While I never once got bored or sick of the food in Calangute or Varkala, I think I’ve reached my limit here in Kovalam. I love seafood, but I’m beginning to crave non-seafood dishes. I love lounging at the beach all day without any worries, but I’m beginning to yearn for a change. Yesterday is a good example, filled with indicators that we’re ready for a change. We set off in the morning for Thiravanathapuram (for obvious reasons, it still goes by its old name of Trivandrum), to explore the state capitol and run some errands. Indicator number 1: We left the beach for the city. When we arrived, we found a cheap little hole-in-the-wall restaurant to eat breakfast. Indicator number 2: Joylani craves south Indian food (breakfasts especially) and prefers hole-in-the-wall (even with all the unsanitary conditions) places to nicer restaurants serving Westernized food (which is pretty surprising to me). Also, I get agitated if my breakfast is too bland- who would’ve ever guessed Joylani would search out dingy Indian restaurants and I would like my breakfast spicy? When we returned in the afternoon, we just hung out on our balcony rather than go swimming. Indicator number 3: When we first got the beach, we couldn’t stay out of the water. Now, we’re content to stay in the cooler indoors- Kovalam might be the hottest/most humid place we’ve been so far. The last two nights, we haven’t ordered any seafood. Indicator number 4: I’m not indulging in the thing I like most about Kerala. What’s the point of staying at the beach, if you’re not going to swim, hang out in the city during the day, and skip out on the seafood?

Luckily, we’re leaving tomorrow to celebrate our second anniversary in what I consider to be one of the best places on the globe. See you in a week!

load up the boats to cast the nets

Pull in the nets

Check out the catch

Box ‘em up

Crowds come to start buying fish

Fish

Or you go out in your boat and fish

But these boats work on the principal that wood floats, not displacing water…

Kerala’s self-proclaimed nickname is “God’s Own Country.” This is not far from the truth in a verdant state of beaches, coconut and banana plantations, and hills of coffee and tea. This green tropical state is almost how one would picture Eden. Yet, its goodness extends far beyond its natural beauty. Those familiar with Kerala know that it’s a picture of what India could be. Independence in 1947 merged three states (two independent, plus the British-ruled province of Malabar) into present day Kerala, based on linguistic lines (Kerala is the only state that speaks Malayalam). Although many people give credit to the mainly-Italian missionaries that settled here, at the time of Independence, Kerala was much like the rest of India. In 1947, literacy in Kerala was marginally higher than the rest of India; today it boasts a 98% literacy rate, compared with 65% for the rest of India (approximately 50% for females and 75% for males). Life expectancy in Kerala is 74 years, a full 10 years more than the Indian national average. The educational system, anti-upper-caste movements, and a history of matrilineal societies have also helped Kerala avoid many social problems. The female-male ratio is 1.06 (same as western countries), compared to .93 in the rest of male-dominated female-subjugated India. Kerala is ahead of even China in many educational and health statistics, while India uniformly lags behind its neighbor across the board (except for civil rights issues, of course). In fact, China could probably learn from Kerala, where education is credited with reducing the fertility rate from the Indian national average of 3.0 to 1.9 (below that of even China). Studies have actually shown that education is better at reducing family size than coercive measures. It is widely known that Kerala has one of two communist governments in Kerala. Right-wingers always credit the missionaries for Kerala’s development, while statistics show that radical left policies have worked at curing problems here. The flipside is, of course, that economic development is behind the Indian average and many Keralan’s go abroad to find work (mainly the Middle East), which accounts for the unrivaled amount of money that flows into the state from foreign remittances. And so Kerala is a model of successful left-wing-policies being implemented in India, and it poses an interesting question: social well-being or economic growth? It seems that in a nation where 850 million are close to starving, Kerala’s prioritization of welfare is worth looking at.

Much of the information here is from The Argumentative Indian, by Amrtya Sen. It is the best book I’ve ever read on India and highly recommend it to anyone wanting to learn about India, whether you were born and raised here or don’t know a thing about India.