Road Trip - Day Four

And then the wonderland of Florida, its billboards and its bling. We drove past Gainesville, place where decades ago (or was it yesterday?) where Charlotte and I met in an anthropology class and, in a sense, a longer road trip began...of which this is a side trip. And then, after cruising Alligator Alley, we arrived in vast, diverse, cosmopolitan, sun-splashed metro Miami.
And the palm tree (cared for in Fort Collins for the past months and decorated for Christmas by Charlotte) arrived along with the sofa, bed, CDs, clothes, books, wine glasses, bunt pans, lamps, paintings, cabinets, tv, watering cans, pottery, pots and pans, stereo speakers, keyboard, chairs...safe and sound. The stuff of our lives. Leaving the unloading to the next day, we sat on the balcony of Tom and Halie's apartment, looking out over the houses and wetlands that form south Florida. Road trip over. Home

Road Trip - Day Three

After visiting with Jose, we headed across the wide Mississippi (tho' it was lost in the fog) and headed southeast through Illinois (tho' it was lost in the fog). Then crossing the Ohio (partially obscured by fog) into Kentucky, into Tennessee, into Georgia (partially obscured by fog). The cities were centers of swaths of slow moving trucks and cars pouring onto the interstates in search of ways out of town, ways to shopping centers, to emporiums of stuff for Christmas presents. But we ate up the miles, fed the beast, noted our reliance upon middle eastern oil, told stories, listened to music, listed to news (obscured by the fog), stopped for food at gas stations, noted how billboards obliterate the American landscape (actually form the new American landscape), shared observations on law school and life, and made decisions about stopping for the night (we headed for the Florida border...making it around 1 am), about which highway to take (two interstates diverged in a wood...), about how to live our lives. You know, road trip talk.

Road Trip - Day Two

I 70 laid down its dry pavement east across the Nebraska plains. We ate mile after mile. As well as eating snacks that Charlotte had packed. We stopped at truck stops, taking a while to figure out just how you pay for diesel fuel at gigantic pumps and how you really need a long broom handle to wash the windows. I also learned that when you want to check to see if the diesel is going into the tank, you do not just pull the handle out and look at it while it continues to pour out the fuel.

Fog replaced sun as we crossed into Missouri. In the late, damp afternoon, we pulled into the eastern fringes of St. Louis. And, following up on a morning call to Melissa, we met up with her and Jose for supper. Jose liked the truck (what's not to like) and wanted to join the road trip. But we told him he'd have to ride in the back (where he could sleep on the sofa). He declined our offer but thought it would be fun to drive the truck himself.




After supper, we navigated (more or less) successfully through the complex of interstates that slice through St. Louis, crossed the fog-strewn Mississippi, and headed southeast toward the next major city, Atlanta.

Road Trip

Wed. Dec. 19 - After Charlotte, Cory, Tom and I loaded the Penske truck with the contents of his Denver condo, we headed east. This was a Christmas road trip. Two thousand, two hundred (more or less) miles of interstate: I 70 - I 64 - I 57 - I 24 - I 75 (more or less) should get us to his and Halie's new apartment in Pembroke Pines.

The weather was bright; the road was dry; the conversation flowing.


We put into Hays, Nebraska for the evening. Ate a a brew pub that was not really a brew pub, but it was right next store to an Auto Parts place that supplied some additional tie-downs for the Vespa which, being the last item but the most precious item we are carrying, needed some extra care to stay upright against the side of the mighty Penske.

On the slopes

When I came over the pass to Winter Park on Wednesday, the "beach" at Berthoud Pass was in full blast. These guys were enjoying a break from the heavy falling snow. All they needed were the pink flamingos to make it a total scene. The rest of the backcountry skiers and riders were still gliding between the trees. I had come up somewhat late from Fort Collins where Charlotte was finishing the 13? 14? 15? packages of gifts she was sending off to family scattered across the country. We were still feeling the glow of the annual cookie party which, these days, has become less about cookies and more about friendship, neighbors, music, and a wide range of pot luck food and drink.

But at Winter Park twelve inches of powder had fallen. Deep powder, deep silence. And Thursday was one of those perfect ski days: clear sun in the morning on the deep powder, clouds come rolling in the early afternoon, around 1:30 the temperature begins to drop and by 3:30 when I was leaving the parking lot to return to the hostel in Fraser the snow had begun to fall again.


I've been working on the bumps and have noticed some slight improvement, though it could just be the deep powder is being gentle. What remains the same, without any regard to technique, is the beauty of being in these mountains in the midst of winter snows and that sense of exhilaration that comes from a smooth descent of the slopes.

OK So we're not always on the road

Like this morning, for example, I woke up to the first snow of the season in Fort Collins. I could hear the crunch of car tires before I opened the curtains (it was 7:00 am...I'd been up late working on a report). And there were sounds and smells from the kitchen wafting up the stairs. The ornaments on the tree were shining in the morning sun. The geraniums which had nearly been tossed out at the end of summer were summering in the window. Outside the aspens were still white against the snow.

But things were really happening in the kitchen. Charlotte was working her magic on gingerbread cookies... After breakfast, I looked up images of "lion" and "owl" on the google so she could get the colors right and began to clean the house for the annual cookie party on Saturday night.
















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Tur Key in the Keys

We came together for Thanksgiving, 2007 - Werge, Miller, Canas, Whitehead, Gramajo, and Kanashiro - in a house on a canal in Key Largo. It was our fifth year in our roving Thanksgiving, hanging out together as a family in a part of the country where one of us lives. So this year we headed to south Florida where Tom's in law school (Florida International) and Halie is helping to guide the fortunes of a major mall.

There were a few new faces, in addition to the egret who joined us for dinner. There was Hervin Gramajo, Robin's step son, who practiced his pool shots in the upper game room.









Sharing the turkey was Kenzo Kanashiro, currently of Miami, the son of our Peruvian compadres, Hillary and Tito, who were godparents to Ingrid. Our friendship was one of the joys of our four year sojourn in Peru. Tom and Kenzo were born within several months of one another...as their baby pictures, in matching boxes, will attest. And now they paddle their own kayaks, if not canoes, on a Thanksgiving canal ride.




Though Tom was studying for his law school exams some of the time, not everyone took that same approach to the unfolding of the day's events.

Ingrid became intent at times with the jigsaw puzzle, but not enough to grab the bike or the kayak from time to time for a spin.



Robin enjoyed the beaches...here he comes out of the sea from a dip. The underlying geology of the Florida keys makes for shallow shorelines. Charlotte created shell art in the sands of Fort Lauderdale on our final day.




And while we made several attempts to capture us all in one shot, using various time settings on our cameras, we have to make do, at this point, with those who were not running back and forth between the cameras and the group. We did loop off a few tops of heads, but it was all in the work of a vacation.


And here is hoping that the kayaks and the deck chairs are waiting till next year.

the people, yes, the people

The flight from Chennai back to Denver takes about 27 hours, including layovers. The Lufthansa flight left at 2:00 am on Thursday and, through the wonder of the earth's rotation, I arrived in Colorado at 4:00 pm that afternoon. "So who knows where the time goes," as Judy Collins once sang (well she undoubtedly sang it more than once." On the plane I was adding to my journal and reading over some of the entries remembering the people walking around the Golden Lotus tank at the temple to Meenakshi in Madurai. And then changing planes, other people (carrying more stuff but not necessarily more joy) likewise walking or jogging to their next destination. The same? Different? Seems to me much more the same than different. On my last night, I was invited to dinner by one of my son Tom's colleagues, Dorairaj, who works in Chennai. We had idly, chutney, and a number of dishes whose names I was only becoming familiary with. Dorairaj had spent some months working in Colorado...I can only hope our hospitality and welcome to those travelling among us is as full and generous as that of the people I met in Tamil Nadu and Kerala.

High courts...last day in Chennai

So on this last day, I took a rickshaw to the High Court...the British temple to the law that was intended to rival the temples that previous empires had left over the landscape of Tamil Nadu. And like those temples, the high court was filled with people seeking justice, seeking favors, lawyers in black robes sipping coffee in the courtyards jammed with motocycles, judges sitting on high benches, scribes typing documents, messangers carrying bundles of papers from courtroom to advocates' offices. Above all the tall domes and the spires of the dark red brick buildings, their wide stairways and columns reaching above the trees. In contrast, the rickshaw driver's home (he invited me since we'd been together all day and we needed a break from the heat) was small, a few rooms on the bottom story of a very old house, his two boys, one girl, one nephew, wife, wife's father, wife's sister living in a configuration that was hard to discipher. Temples and people, warm, good hearted people, living on little...some impressions of a last day in India, at least for this time around.

and back to the city....

Took a flight this morning back to Chennai, a sprawling, fast paced world metropolis. Waiting to board the plane, I realized I was the only "non Indian" in the quiet waiting area. But one of my seatmates on the hour long trip was an Indian woman from South Africa. Her great grandfather had migrated from Tamil Nadu (she still speaks some Tamil) and she comes back to visit from time to time in part, she said, "because the shopping is so good." And my other seatnate (three abreast but we all liked to talk) was an Indian living in Malayasia whose grandfather had migrated from Kerala. He had come to spend some time with a friend who had "moved back" after a generation. A pilot for Malayasia Airlines, he commented critically on the bumpiness of our approach to the city. I was by far not the only "foreigner" on the flight...I just happened to look more Norweigan than most.

On the bus

So I start the journey back: to Fort Cochin, to Chennai, to Frankfort, to Detroit (Detroit??), to Denver, to Fort Collins. Several forts in there...part of the history of groups taking over land from other groups. I rode the bus back to Fort Cochin this morning, discovering a litle of how it works for a bus driver. One principle is "use al the road", that is, even though there are only two lanes, there is room for three vehicles or more abreast of one another. Two buses, for example, going the same or opposite directions plus a car or several rickshaws or multiple motorcycles. A second principle is "look for an opening" and head for it. This is about finding space for one's own vehicle, but also leaving just enough space for other vehicles to squeeze past (though they might have to give onto the side of the roadway (usually no "shoulder"). And another is "use the horn" for warning, for bringing notice to yourself, for letting someone know you are passing, about to pass or have just passed. And a fourth is "bulk," the bigger you are the more road you can command. When the road is clear, a bus or car will tend to drive down its center, allowing space for the motorcycles and rickshaws and bikes and people on foot on both sides. It is not blind obediance to some set of abstract government regulations, it is a kind of ballet of multiple players, a continual flow of movement and rhythm. Yet I have seen many fewer accidents than in Fort Collins in the space of these three weeks. It must have to do with focus...drivers are very focused on the dance. They are not sipping lattes and answering the phone...they watch the road carefully. And also as an Indian pointed out, "Don't worry, the finger of God is on it."

Colors

We came upon a wedding at a temple on our way to the snake temple. It was a midmorning break from the canals, the canoes, the ayurvedic massages and the black tea. We (an Italian traveller and myself) got there as the bride and groom were being arrayed with differing combinations of parents, siblings, cousins for the videographer. The bride's hair was full of flowers, white flowers, trailing down the back of her red sari, her gold bracelets, necklaces, hip necklaces, anklets, earings, shining brightly. The stone gods at the snake temple also bore the color of gold, but it was offerings of tumeric poured over each of them. Thousands of statues of shiva being protected by the snake, sometimes just the cobras themselves. They represent donations by persons cured of snake bite by doing puja at the temple or from women whose barreness was ended by a pilgrimage.

Keraleeyem

The ayurvedic center where I stay is at the juncture of two canals, one wide (with governmentally organized stone walls along each side) and one narrow (with fringes of grass, logs, shrubs). I was sitting in front of my cottage (109 with air conditioning) when I saw a wide canoe come into view displaying a small canopy. Under the colorful canopy were four plastic seats that were covered with orange towels. I montioned to the paddler, asking if he would take me for a ride. So he crewed right over and said, " 150 for an hour". I said "o.k., but I only want half an hour, but i'll pay you." So he agreed after taking some time to think it over. I got in, sat on the plastic seat, we took off, then I looked back and grabbed the front oar and said "I am going to paddle." When we got to the middle of the juncture, heasked, "Big canal, small canal." And I said, "small canal" so we went through this small opening, a kind of creek. It was lined like the other canals with houses, some huts, but generally well built structures, men and women were bathing, women cleaning pots and pans, squatting on large flat stones placed just above the edge of the water. We went further and further and then he said something like "mooogar, moogar"and I looked back and he was pointing and I followed his finger and hanging just above my head on a series of trees leaning over the canal, mangos ripening.

A canoe just went by...

one of many. Men and women rowing as if they were walking down the street, but hey, no horns blasting in your ear. Quiet, except for the crows. Two men are standing up as the narrow, low amost to the waterline canoe passes. In the front, nother man paddles and in the back two young girls do the same. A large tourist boat, engines whirling and gasoline fouling the water, passes by and the girls have to quickly help balance and the men, now I see they are their fathers, tell them how to navigate safely. Another canoe, two men paddling a load of furniture. Another canoe, a group of eight adults, men and women, paddle across to the far shore and set off in a group...probably to Bible or Koran class. Another big tourist boat coming by (keeping a schedule?) with no passangers. But supper is on the table here at the Keraleeyem Resort and Ayurvedic Center, on the Nehru Canal, in Allepey. So off I go.

Katakhali

Went to a performance last night of Katahali, a traditional form of dance, music, story telling. Staging performances that remain somehow true to the form for tourists is difficult (like the hula dancing in Hawaii around the pool, for example, while drinks are being served). But this was done from an educational, artistic and very sincere perspective...I was very impressed. The theatre was small; the overhead fans were going and beneath each seat was a fan of palm fronds. The dance was a short scene from the Ramayana; the singer was superb; and the costumes and makeup (you can go early and watch the makeup being applied)were stunning. I could imagine the impact of such performances in isolated villages up and down the coast in the days before movies and tv. Stories, stories...so much of India is about stories. No wonder it is the world's largest producer of movies.

Beer in Teapots

One of the sights in Fort Cochin are the fishing nets, some say introduced from China during the time of Kubla Khan. The large structures still catch fish, but mainly they catch tourists. Large stones weigh a set of logs that drop nets into the water where they are left for a while and the net is raised by a series of ropes. I was eating some of that fish, cooked in tandoori style, last night when I asked if they had beer, there being none on the menu and I did not see any beer bottles on other tables. The waiter said that they did not have a license, they could not serve beer, but they had tea. So he brought a teapot with beer inside and a mug. At any rate, it set off the fish just fine after another hot day and evening. The tea cost about the price of a large beer.

Cochin and Erantulam

Came down from the hills yesterday, but it took me a day to figure out that blogger.com requires Windows XP. A lot of machines in old Fort Cochin (am just down the street from a church built in 1503 by Vasco di Gama and his friends) are still using Windows 2000. What would Vasco say? Well, it would probably be in Portuguese but I have the feeling that he must have learned some Malayali in his time here. Of course people have been trading off this coast for its spices long before he showed up. Part of which gives this part of India a very open, cosmopolitan feel. Christians (the orthodox Syrian Church ) claim St. Thomas (the one with the doubts) founded churches here, some converts coming from the earlier Jewish communities (spice traders). The multiplicity of religions and their relative weight (Muslims about 15%, Christians about 24%), the rest Hindus, some animists give this State more of a secular feel than Tamil Nadu...fewer people with "tiklas" on their foreheads and, I realized today, NO cows wandering about. Funny the things you get used to and then all of a sudden miss. Yet again the familiar becoming unfamiliar becoming familiar...no wonder Shiva takes so many forms. The picture by the way comes from a shop in "Jew Town" (yes it's called that in all the guidebooks and street signs) a few blocks away. Which is now not really Jewish anymore, but mostly run by Rajastani traders in crafts and antiques.

Spices

After checking out the tea plantations, coffee plantations, cardamon and pepper groves this morning in a rickshaw...we didn't go to the sandalwood forest because it was 46 km from town..., I spent some time in spice shops in Munnar. Cardamon, peppers of a range of colors, nutmegs, anise, star anise, couscous (haven't figured that one out), little twists of tumeric, not to mention the teas themselves. Still when Sindo brought me tea at the cottage at 7:00 am this morning (he knew the rickshaw was coming at 7:30), it was fairly standard Tata bags. Tata is the huge Indian conglomerate that owns almost all the plantations around here in spite of the hostility of the State government which, for a number of years, has been run by the Communist Party...hence the occassional appearance of the hammer and sickle on abandoned workers' housing. But the tea, Tata or non-Tata, hit the spot as the fog was lifting out of the valley below the cottage.

Up the western ghats

On the road from Madurai past rice fields, past triumphal gates leading to villages off the main road, past brick works housed under huge thatch roofs, past Shiva, Genesh but also past St. Joseph's School, past a convent, past half a dozen weddings (the driver said it was a "good day" for weddings, I asked if it were "because it was Sunday" but he said "No it was a good Tamil day" and I think he began to count off from the last full moon), past textile and spinning mills, past sugar fields, past coconut groves, past several vast engineering college campuses, past dry river beds, past Mother Theresa's University for Women, past Unibank ATMs, and the beginning the climb up the hills, the western ghats ("steps"), up the 13 hair pin turns, climbing above the dry plains, and, at a turn, the Cardamon Planters Association College, the Organic Coffee Growers Welfare Association, then crossing the border outpost into Kerela at what seemed to be a continental divide and then the tea plantations one after another and finally to Munnar and the Munnar Hights (their spelling) Hotel where they might have been expecting me but it didn't seem they were waiting for me or anyone else. At least Ajay and Sindo didn't seem to know much about signing people in. So they gave me my own cottage overlooking the hills and a small lake. And made a chicken (not vegetarians like the Tamils in Tamil Nadu) curry. It's not what my Dad meant when he said we'd go for a Sunday drive.

I have learned to walk down the alleys and narrow paths rather than the main streets on the way to the temple. It would seem that the villages of India have moved to small houses and apartments along these back streets, though perhaps the first stop is the slums around the central part of the city. This morning women at the pump clustered with their plastic yellow, green, red water jugs. Carts set up to serve breakfast (thali on banana leaves). Young men washing their faces from buckets. Children, off from school because it's Saturday, giving me the "hello, how are you? what is your country?" I tell them "Norway," adding, "very cold, very cold." Fruits, potatoes, bananas for sale in little piles. A priest opening up the shrine on the corner but other shrines line the walkway, simple stones, trees and rock carvings. The gods (shiva, ganesh, pavarti) already are annointed with their morning offerings of flowers, ghee, rice powder. And I haven't walked a full block yet.

Idly, Vada or Dosa with your milk coffee, sir?

But the breakfast choices also include uthallapanas, sambar and poori masala. And all that without leaving the hotel. So I got a slow start this morning after a long ride yesterday down the dry, hot (about 90 degrees) eastern plains of Tamil Nadu. I had finally figured out how to get a driver with a little English and car to make me from Tiruvanamalai, after a number of attempts. An Englishman, Nick, also given to the freedom of solo travel rode with me as far as Trichy and we shared the values of travel and stories of trips in Iran (his) and Ethiopia (mine). The journey about 330 km. took us through villages and small towns and broad dry rivers which flood with the monsoons. Madurai is a city, ancient and cosmopolitan, with hotels, such as the Supreme where I am staying, with rooftop restaurants. Thousands and thousands of pilgrims come here to the Meenakshi-Sundareshwara Temple. Before heading there, though, I'm off to ply the streets and figure out this local geography of streets, alleys, markets, and a major train terminal. Then this afternoon when the sun moves from the center of the sky and shadows finally come to the streets, I'll go to the temple. Like people have been doing for a long, long time.

Gingee Fort

This morning I got a car to take me to a fort we had passed on the way into Tiruvannamalai a few days back. We rode through several villages before getting to the fort...well series of forts build and embellished one after another. The site was held by a long series of rulers: the Jains, the Pallavas, the Cholas, the Rashtrakutas, the Hoysalas, the Konars, the Vijayanagar Emperors, the Nayaks, the Marathas, the Mughals, the French, the British and, now, the people of Tamil Nadu. Over this span, consecutive rings of walls were constructed around the main Krishnagiri hill. In climbing the 1,000 or so steps to the top, I passed through six major gates and series of walls, crossed over two moats, and entered buildings that reflected several thousand years of occupation. Temples, graineries, mosques, large enclosed pools (one for elephants), palaces, and barracks all are behind thick walls curving from one hill to another.

After climbing to the highest hill, beginning to run out of water, and having my tika turn runny from sweat, I headed back to the car and to town. The tika, I think that's the term it, is the red mark put on my forehead by a sadu at the end of a short puja we performed together at a shrine on the way up the hill. After several tries, I've figured out how to get to Madurai tomorrow, taking a car and driver, and dropping off Nick, a English fellow traveler, in Trichy on the way.

Ahh but here comes Sagayanathan with some milk coffee and a few bisquits. More later.