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.

Not Starbucks

You can tell it's not starbucks when the guy next to you is eating his dinner off a banana leaf. But, man, was the coffee (milk coffee) the greatest latte in town. It was a shack off the west wall of the Araunachalam temple complex. I'd been up at an ashram, a cave on the lower slopes of the mountain, doing some Quaker meditation. I was heading down the stone steps through the village when I met a stone carver. I bought a couple of meditation balls (lingam on one side and the sign for "Ooommmm" on the other). Because he didn't have change, he took me to his house to get it (his wife was washing clothes in the courtyard). Afterwards, he took me to the local place to celebrate, hence the milk coffee. Anyway while the food on the banana leaf looked good, I stuck to what I knew had been boiled (more or less).

No pictures until I get more than a mail up connection.

Tiruvannamalai and Numbers

On the ride out to Tiruvannamali this morning, Ram taught me to say the first ten numbers in the alphebet in Tamil. I'm having such a good time with that. It really creates all kinds of bonds of friendship or at least common human understanding. That is, seeing me struggle to say "eindu" when you hold up six fingers.

The temple and the town are absolutely staggering. This evening I had two rides in rickshaws (the second time because I could not figure out the streets and kept on getting lost). Oh my god. It is like EVERYONE has a motor cycle and is TWELVE years old. Oh my god. It is so scary.... But then the temple, thronged day and night, thousands of people coming in groups, sometimes families, sometimes coworkers, sometimes lovers (not a lot of them), sometimes as spiritual groups...coming into the sacred enclosures, smiling, expectant, walking smartly (people are not encouraged to hang around), walking purposefully, and not paying any attention to me as a foreigner. Nothing. And when you do hear something it's "Hello" because someone wants to say "hello" to you and to hear it come back at them.

No picture today as I doubt the upload would work. This town has NO water in plastic bottles for sale, NO Kashmiri traders selling Jodpur handiwork in this Tamil town, NO cyber cafe (never, never heard of it), NO hassle from anyone...just wishing I had more coins or small bills for the sadus and the saints.

Silk

Tamel Nadu has been much more closely alligned with the peoples of the bay of Bengal and southeast Asia for much of its history than with northern India. The Tamil alphabet is similar to that used in Cambodia, for example, it is not sanskript. The early Pallava empire built its maritime wealth from the silk production in Kanchipuram and from the stone carving in Mamallapuram.

I have begun to do some shopping and today bought some silk from a woman on the beach. She also is a trader. The people whom I've met seem to put a great emphasis upon their own work, upon the belief that the government will be of no assistance to them, and that the gods remain central. We have to think in stories to understand the truth. I am beginning to meet more people each day; I am figuring out how to find informants; I like exploring all the ways of travel; I am absorbing so much each day and trying to find time for relection.

The blog helps me to do that: to distill each day into a paragraph. Such fun.

Cooking milk tea, watching t.v.

Spent part of the morning in a small thatch hut just on the edge of town listening to stories, like just how was it that Genesh got to have the head of an elephant (well there was actually a big fight between Shiva and Pavarti, etc.). And while I was listening, the wife was preparing milk tea on a wood fire outside...gas seems to be expensive. Three sons, 16, 17. 19, were, one by one, waking up in their bed in the one room house and said "Good morning". A large 36 inch t.v. was on (they were getting cable because otherwise there is just one channel). The sound was turned way down...as the father kept insisting. The sons took turns channel surfing and even the mother, when she switched to cutting onions on a small metal instrument, turned on a favorite movie. So my question was "Who's listening to whose stories?"

And so, are you a follower of Shiva?

This morning I hired a guide away from the archological sites where he was pitching to tourists like myself and had him wander with me through the town to answer questions like: "Who's that temple dedicated to?" Shiva as an incarnation of a fish or fisherman (I didn't catch that), the figure being taken out once a year to the village tank (probably at one time the reservoir) now covered with lily ponds, another statue of Shiva in its center. And my trying to understand his answers like "In India there are two kinds of people: the followers of Shiva and the followers of Vishnu." I told him that he was becoming a culture guide instead of an archeological site guide. And was I becoming one of those "spiritual tourists" they refer to in the travel guides. Or was it just India being India.

Sites and streets

I visited the requisite sites today in Mamalapuram: the five rathas, the shore temple, the penance of arjuna but what really struck me was turning the corner of one of the town streets and suddenly being in the midst of a riot of color, of energy on the level of any new york city street, of people in action. Clearly more stuff happening per square foot of anywhere in the world. The sites fade into the background...to be pursued further in reading on the Pallava rulers of this coast of India from the 6th century on. But today...just life, life, life.

Mamalapuram

Mamalapuram is a small post-tsunami fishing village with monumental rock carvings and temple complexes from the 6th century and a laid back but intense tourist (mainly Indian)infrastructure. I arrived last night from the airport at about 2:00 am, being met by a taxi driver with a sign reading "Rob Fort Collins"...there seemed to have been some confusion about my last name. I had my first lesson in adjusting to travel in India around 2:30 am, to wit, "Hang up the mosquito net only after you have turned off the ceiling fan" or the whirling blade with cut your hand if you're not careful. I was not careful and this morning had my first adventure with South Indian clinic care.

Am not yet adjusted to the time...but I have learned to stay out of the noon day sun, to order coffee with milk (the original latte), to take off my sandals when entering homes, clinics, cybercafes, to take it slowly, to let the experience sink in, to give thanks I am not part of an organized tour being taken to "see" things, to appreciate the soft way in which Tamil is spoken, to enjoy the morning and evening sea breezes, to learn how to eat dosas, and to give thanks for this experience. Waiting for my flight to Chennai in Frankfort I thought I could just get onto a train and spend a few weeks in Europe. Am glad I did not. There will be time for Europe...now is the time for something more adventurous. Ceiling fans and all.

Frankfort airport

I have one minute left after navigating blogspot and the internet in german...and I cant figure out the kezboard...as zou can tell...but itäs all fun...thez charge more to worm in engl

So why India?

I was talking to my friend Rea about how I chose to go to South India. Well, I read some travel literature. India is a huge place...a billion people, so I thought plan small, maybe just one State or two. And I wanted some beach and ocean after a winter of spending as much time as possible on skis in the Rockies. And I wanted to test myself as a stranger in a strange land...could I figure out the bus/train system? could I come to understand what it is like to live in Tamil Nadu or Kerela? could I find a sharp contrast to what I take to be my daily life in Colorado? could I gain some small insight into the life of people, their geography, the culture? And all this without mentioning the beauty of the landscape, the wonder of the temples, the mystery (for me) of Hinduism, the sense of the other.

I've just a few more things to pack: camera, some clothes, a few books, my journal. But first a walk with Charlotte and Pacha in the cool night air.

Thinking....

I was listening to Maria Callas ("The Best of ... " album. She got me thinking about Madurai, one of the cities I wish to visit. So I came to look it up in Wikipedia and in the fourth of five paragrahs, the web site said:

This is the History of Madurai (Kadambavanam) which is said in Thiruvilaiyadal Puranam. Even now one can see the tree existing in the Northern side of the Temple. And the deity was named Kadambavanavashini. Also one can find the Statues of Kulasekara Pandiyan & Dhanajeyan facing opposite to each other which are in the Southern side of the Temple.

And I thought, "How am I going to figure this one out?"