Pictures

Trekking in the Rainforest of the Western Ghats

Temple of Shiva near Turtle Bay

Sunset at Turtle Bay

Fishing boats in Kanyakumari

Children from local fishing village near Turtle Bay

Full Indian Thali lunch

Turtle Bay and The Rainforest Retreat

On Friday the 13^th we caught a night train from Kochin to Kundapur, and from there we took a bus to Turtle Bay Beach Resort, where we spent the following 3 days and nights living it up in the Ayur village. It was really just a small collection of huts and buildings with hammocks strewn about and a small bar with an outdoor area for eating. Fifteen of us lived in the yoga studio, sleeping on thin mattresses laid out side by side on the ground with an outdoor shower house across the path – it was simple but wonderful and we didn’t mind the extra company of ants, geckos and sand! The resort was set between a rural area and a small fishing village, and boasted a modest yet incredibly beautiful, travel-brochure-worthy stretch of sandy white beach with protruding volcanic rocks and billowing palm and coconut trees. We arrived early on Saturday and the sun was just rising over the trees; with the sight of this pristine beach and ocean, we regained the strength and energy lost on the train and headed right for the water to dip our feet in the Arabian Sea.

The next three days were like a dream; I had to keep reminding myself that I was on a semester abroad and not on an all-inclusive vacation, but that’s how it felt! That entire first day we spent soaking up the sun, lounging in hammocks and swimming in the ocean…there were some sunburns! It’s so ironic that all we want in the West is to have that summer glow all year round, and here they have drugstores filled with “whitening” body lotions and skin creams and the women walk around holding umbrellas to avoid darkened skin. Come on people!

The second day we got a visit from a local NGO that was focusing on building toilets in the neighbouring community to prevent people from defecating on the beach, previously a huge issue since there was nowhere else to go and the tides usually swept it away. It was really interesting to learn about what they were doing and later that day I walked along the beach; sure enough, there was poop, just not on the resort’s stretch of real estate. As a group, we decided to donate enough money for them to construct another toilet. The fewer poops on that beach, the better. We also got to visit the local village and meet some children…they were so curious and absolutely loved being in the photos and seeing them appear immediately on our cameras.  We got back to the resort in time to watch the sun vanish over the horizon…we ate dinner and sat around the pavilion drinking beer and chatting. One of our profs got a little too into the booze which was a riot.

Monday a bunch of us went snorkelling, which was a long trip to get out there (hour long bus ride to another beach and another hour on a small motor boat). By the time we made it out to the island most of us were sick from the bus or boat ride or both, and those who weren’t sick were so doped up on gravol we spent half the time passed out on the boat… but we managed to get some decent snorkelling in anyways! The beach we left from was a common pilgrimage site and has the biggest Shiva statue/temple in the world (Shiva is the god of destruction), so that was pretty cool. We spent the last night in Turtle Bay doing pretty much the same thing as the previous night, but took the party onto the beach where we sat around a huge bonfire and stargazed.

On the morning of the 17^th we departed for the Rainforest Retreat in the Western Ghats near Madikeri. That bus looked like it was from the 60s (even though Chris had requested a ‘deluxe coach’), and we had to stop a couple times for mysterious mechanical difficulties. It took us 13 hours to get there but at least we did! As usual, there was the difficulty of finding toilets while we were on the road (nevermind trying to decipher confusing and often false directions to toilets); by now most of us have learned not to avoid drinking water on travel days but a bunch of us still wound up in some remote village squatting to pee in a back alley and asking if anyone has toilet paper?!

It was all SO worth the journey – the rainforest retreat is a homestay on a family owned organic plantation called the Mojo Plantation. At one of the highest elevations in India, the Mojo plantation receives a ton of rainfall and has a much milder climate, allowing a vast number of crops to be grown. The two owners are a couple of Ph.D biologists and their daughter, who left their urban life to explore sustainable farming and a more harmonious way of life. They were incredibly cool people and the owner (Sujata) spent the first day giving us a tour of their crops and teaching us about the rainforest ecosystem, biodiversity and the myriad of benefits of organic farming. It was mind-blowingly awesome, and we spent most of the afternoon harvesting vanilla and coffee beans.

Our second day we took a long trek up to a viewpoint on the ridge, where we could see the whole area surrounding us. Hiking back we came across two rat snakes intertwined; at first we were told they were mating, only to find out later that it was in fact two males fighting. Typical. That afternoon, we visited a small school in the nearby village. There were only 8 students there, but we taught them a little about Canada, sang songs and gave them some of the teddy bears, school supplies and tennis balls we brought with us. That night we had a fantastic meal and saw a slideshow presentation by Sujata showing us more of the biodiversity and talking about the connections and interdependence between every living thing on their plantation.

On our third day we hiked across rice paddies and lower farm fields to a temple called the Sacred Grove. The afternoon was spent doing ‘tea plucking’ and learning about how coffee is processed. On our final day in the rainforest we took a bus to a nearby river where we had a picnic and spent the day swimming and enjoying our last day of holiday before hitting the books in Mysore.

On our way to Mysore, we stopped at the Golden Temple, a temple for Tibetan Monks taking refuge from communist persecution. We’re spending three weeks here in Mysore at a Christian Missionary/conference center called the Organization for the Development of People, where we’ll complete half our course requirements (the other half will be in Jaipur). Our rooms look reminiscent of a mental asylum: bars over the windows, hospital-like metal framed beds, fluorescent lights and heavy doors…but hey, we’re all here together!

So far, it’s been great here. The food is good and we’ve had some great lectures and a huge department/grocery store 100m away which was VERY exciting (we had yet to find any kind of grocery store or sizeable retail space in India). Our schedule is between 4-6 hours of class/day and the gates are locked at 9 pm but we have a lot of material to cover in just 15 days of classes! Yesterday, a monkey hopped in through the window of our classroom and made off with one girl’s bananas right from her bag, I’m assuming that’s why we have bars over our window but it was quite hilarious to see.

This afternoon, Devon Peter and I ventured to the town center to explore and get our bearings around here. After a chaotic experience at the post office trying to send Devon’s mail (think hordes of people crowding around one open service desk ten minutes before closing time, with no concept of a line and all yelling at the clerk), a rickshaw driver stopped us in our tracks (as many people do), to ask where we’re from. He proceeded to tell us how much he loves ice hockey and thinks cricket is a waste of a sport and insisted on showing us around ‘his India’.

We climbed into his souped-up auto rickshaw and he introduced himself as ‘Master Blaster’ and proceeded to crank up Bob Marley as he swerved through all these back-alley roads, narrowly avoiding cows chickens dogs and pedestrians. We passed three boys packed onto one bicycle…the last one was holding two chickens, I have no idea how they did it. We went to visit a friend of Master Blaster’s incense shop, where we were ushered inside. A woman was rolling incense sticks and she showed me how to roll the coal over the bamboo stick, telling me she rolls about 7,000 sticks per day. We ventured through some spice and produce markets before heading back to the center for dinner.

That concludes my tales – for now. Life will settle down for the next few weeks while we stick our noses to the grindstone but I’m sure there will be more adventures to come…India has not ceased to amaze, confuse, shock and inspire me!

Nomadic Tourists in the Land of Coconuts

So,

I survived the first train ride!!! And the two that followed, as well as hopefully the one tonight (although I was more fortunate than others, who just barely survived). Our group was dropping like flies last week with various forms of the shit-pukes, and that didn’t stop on the train…poor things. Abby spent most of the train ride either in the toilet or sitting outside, barf bag in hand, while a group of Indian men stared at her like “what the hell is wrong with this green-faced girl!?” Ah, the joys of being sick while traveling…I wouldn’t know though, since I’ve been lucky so far and hoping to keep it that way as long as possible...

Anyways, on a happier note everyone is back to themselves now and the trip is going GREAT! But, before I get into the details of our recent touring, I’d like to take just a moment to refute the negative connotation that has developed (it seems) around the words tourism and tourist. Chris told us in Pondicherry that much of our first month in India would be spent doing ‘touristy’ things while we ‘acclimatize.’ I thought about this and realized I wouldn’t want it any other way and I don’t think tourists deserve the stigma. They take the initiative to abandon their comfy lives (in our case at least) and put themselves in uncomfortable, unfamiliar, expensive and sometimes even scary situations and in doing so become global citizens who can understand and appreciate other cultures, languages and religions. We are not yet (as you will see) global citizens, but we’re taking the initiative to immerse ourselves in a whole different world than the ones we know and that’s nothing to be scoffed at. End of rant, don’t hate on the tourists..they’re not all bad!

We awoke after our 10-hour train ride from Pondicherry to Kanyakumar and looking outside the window I saw MOUNTAINS! There were rice paddies and palm trees and fluorescent-coloured houses, not to mention the usual cow sightings. Traveling by train isn’t all that bad, if you don’t mind the close quarters and the company of many cockroaches (they’re small though). Furthermore, it gave us a great opportunity to get to know Indian people, who have continued to amaze me with their 1) proficiency in English 2) friendliness and 3) overall cheerfulness, curiosity and willingness to help. The two men in our compartment offered to take the top bunks (the bunks are more like human-sized shelves stacked 3-high on each side), so that we could keep our backpacks on the ground and close to us.

We spent two days in Kanyakumari, the southernmost tip of India. It was BEAUTIFUL! We saw lots of brightly coloured fishing boats, a big white church with multi-coloured flags flying in the wind, a massive street market (where we found REAL pearl earrings for 50 cents)! We visited an old fort, a beach, a temple and watched the sunset over the Indian Ocean. We brought a bunch of tennis balls to India, having been informed that kids LOVE them and on the second morning we were wandering down a back lane and decided to gave a couple away. As soon as one tennis ball was produced we were swarmed by Indian children, all wanting a ball.

Unfortunately, we hadn’t anticipated this and only had a few… we quickly realized the tennis balls were more of a status symbol than something they could share and play with, but by then it was too late and we had interfered (probably for the worse) with the social organization of that group of children. I felt pretty crappy about that for the rest of the day, but learned a valuable lesson about the naivety of charity and how important it is to be very careful not to do more harm than good.

The next night we caught the night train from Kanyakumari to Coimbatore, and while we were waiting for our bus to transfer us from the hotel to the station, we started talking to an older man in the lobby:

Indian man (to group of us): Where are you all from?

Kat: Canada!

Indian man (with heavy accent): Mhmmm, where?

Kat (using big arm gestures and speaking extra slow): Canada, like North America? It’s across the Atlantic…Above the United States!

Indian Man: Ah, yes I meant where in Canada…I am from Richmond Hill.

Hoots of laughter ensued, Kat turned slightly red…You can never forget just how small the world really is!

Coimbatore: We stayed at a really nice hotel, the first with wi-fi, which lifted everyone’s spirits (especially those lugging their laptops along). In the afternoon, we visited one of the best universities in India, Tamil Nadu Agricultural University, where we had some very interesting talks about agriculture and education in India. The evening was spent mostly at a huge department store FULL of Indian clothes…a group of us went and were overwhelmed by the amount of colours, patterns and materials they had…Indian fashion is really incredible, I still am amazed at the wonderful clothes I see women wearing, they always look fantastic!

The next day, we took a bus up into the mountains, to a more remote town called Ooty. The temperature dropped significantly but was embraced by most of us…I’d almost forgotten what goose bumps were! We stopped at an outreach program run by Tamil Nadu University, which was working on using cow poop and pee to make organic pesticides and fertilizers..very cool stuff. We saw a rose garden with more than 3,000 different kinds of roses and we visited a botanical garden and a tea factory. For lunch, we went to one of the nicest hotels I’ve ever seen, right on top of the hills looking over the town and all the terracing. We had an amazingly delicious and care-free meal, eating all kinds of fruits, vegetables and even meat, and drinking the water provided to us (you mean we don’t need to buy bottled water!?) Yeahh, it was a good day.

The next morning we caught the train from Coimbatore to Cochin at 5:30 a.m, easy peasy by now. Cochin (also known as Kochi) is a much more touristy area on the Western coast of India and I was surprised at how many tourists there are here, most of them from Europe. We ate lunch at the rooftop restaurant in our hotel, and with views of palm trees and ocean and brightly coloured houses, I honestly didn’t feel at all like I was in a ‘developing’ country. India is pretty well-developed from what I have seen so far, and I have not experienced the reduced standard of living I expected to. Although, to be fair, this might change once I get the chance to live with a family instead of in an air-conditioned hotel.

We spent the afternoon wandering along the waterfront, where there was a long sidewalk with a never-ending supply of vendors trying to sell us jewelers, fish, snacks, pop, ice cream, toys, souvenirs and postcards. The tourists have really made a booming business for the locals of Cochin.

Yesterday, a group of us organized to do a backwaters boat tour, where we were guided through some of the rivers and small channels that cut through the islands and peninsula of Cochin. We rode a huge boat made out of wood and coconut-fiber ropes, propelled by one man on each end of the boat using long sticks to push off the shallow mud bottom.  We stopped at a house and learned how coconut exteriors are soaked and woven into rope (they need to be soaked in the river for 6 months!), and we also saw pepper growing on a mango tree. The man guiding us explained the Kera means coconut, and la means land, so the province we are in (Kerala) means the land of coconuts! At night, we all went to the local arts center to see the Kathakali dancers, who performed a bunch of cultural dances and songs and wowed us with their crazy facial expressions and costumes. They had elaborate outfits and the men were dressed as women with heavy makeup and yellow face paint, it was pretty cool.

Today was a slow-paced day, but I got to try a fruit I’d never even heard of before called a sour sop (hopefully that’s spelt properly). Anyway, it’s a small green ball with spikes, but has this white fleshy fruit on the inside and some black bean-like seeds…everyone was saying it was like eating brains but I thought it was delicious! I also was shocked to see peanut butter on the shelf of a small grocery store… I just couldn’t resist and am now armed with two bananas and a small tub of PB, all I need now is some naan and I’ll be one happy monkey! Tonight we leave for Turtle Bay on the train again…we are on the train basically every other night but it’s proven to be a great way to see a lot of places in a small span of time. Turtle Bay apparently has no electricity of internet and is very isolated, but I’m looking forward to finally getting to swim in the ocean and do some snorkeling! Well, that’s it for now, adieu.

First Impressions

Well, it's been only 3 full days since 25 tired, dirty and hungry University of Guelph students staggered off the plane in Chennai, India, but I already feel like I could write a novel about my first impressions of this incredible country. But, in the interest of brevity, I am instead going to write this blog internet-cafe style: spontaneous, slightly sloppy and definitely unedited, so please try to bear with me!

After collecting our bags and having a brief sleep in our hotel (with was minimalist to say the least, though only slightly less than what I expected), we awoke to a breakfast of bananas, toast and chai. I'm thinking, 'Okay, I can handle this. Time to test out my aqua-tabs.' Purified some tap water from the hotel (I'll get to that in a bit) and we hit the road. A small group of us wandered around for about 20 minutes, 10 of which were spent just trying to get across the street. Finally, we decided to brave the menacing streets and Chennai and hop into a rickshaw.

Our rickshaw driver was incredibly friendly (and proficient in english) and gave me a great first impression of people in India, which has not been diminished. He spent the next four hours showing us his city. I could spend quite some time telling you about the driving in India, but basically imagine this: no distinct lanes, vehicles of all sizes and shapes with all kinds of passengers driving at breakneck speeds nearly directly towards each other, all while refusing to slow down and laying on their horns (most of which are the squeezy bike-horn types), yet somehow always managing to just barely miss a collision. It's pushy, it's brave, it's insane, it's likely the most dangerous thing I've ever witnessed but it gets a LOT of people where they want to go and FAST.

Anyways, we stopped at a mall which was the freakishly similar to any mall in Canada (though built upwards not outwards) and we visited churches, a school, monuments and walked along the beach. The beach looked like something from a tourist brochure; blue water and skies, white sand and palm trees, but there was SO much litter, fishing nets and boats strewn left right and centre, and no locals to be seen except a small group of children splashing in the surf. Our driver took us to a small vegetarian restaurant for lunch, where we were immediately ushered to a private back room with A/C..not exactly sure why, but we often seem to segregated from locals at restaurants.

Later in the afternoon we met up at the hotel and took a bus 3 hours South to Pondicherry, which gave us phenomenal sights of rural India: rice paddies, the ocean, small rural villages, salt marshes and a breathtaking sunset. This is what I took in during the 10-20 minutes I managed to stay awake...by that point I was feeling pretty shitty overall (I'm guessing the hotel water did me in). I stumbled up to our hotel room at 7pm and slept until the next morning. No love lost, India!

Yesterday, a group of us took a rickshaw ride outside the city to a UNESCO world heritage site: Auroville, a commune dedicated to human unity, sustainable innovation, meditation and known for its international membership. I still don't fully understand what it's all about, but we walked around the area and took a small hike to see the this giant gold globe, in which the biggest crystal on the planet is situated and around which the people of Auroville go for meditation and concentration. It looked like a giant gold suction cup bouncy ball that just landed smack in the middle of a golf course...or a UFO, but it was pretty weird anyway. After some solar-cooled strawberry ice cream, we dragged our sweaty selves back to the hotel, stopping for fruit along the way. We cut up our fruit on the hotel floor with our swiss army knives and ate it all (I ate an entire pineapple and loved every bite!)

Last night, we ate at the hotel where we were served WAY more food than we could possibly eat. The hotel manager and several staff came out to watch us eat and directed us as to which sauces go with which carbohydrate-item (still working on the names). Under the spotlight and not wanting to be rude, I ate way more than I otherwise would have, but I guess to them we were really fascinating... the waiter found it absolutely HILARIOUS that I was spooning the masala sauce onto my naan...oops, guess I won't be using my handy dandy spork as much as I'd hoped.

Today, I ventured off with several other girls to the more touristy french quarters of Pondicherry. After feeling like the only group of tourists in India for the first couple days, it was nice to see other travelers wandering around like us. We walked along the water (this time a rocky beach), and made friends with a few young school boys who tagged along  for half an hour. We saw statues of Gandhi and Nehru. The damanges of the cyclone which hit South-East India about a week ago were alot more obvious in Pondicherry than in Chennai: trees fallen everywhere, power lines down, sidewalk covered in rubble and lots of debris. Locals were picking up the pieces, but no one seemed surprised, devastated or angry with their misfortune; people just went about their work like they'd accepted the facts and were focused on getting the job done. Life carries on one way or the other, and I am amazed at the resiliency of these people. We stopped at a nice restaurant in the french quarters called Rose Cafe, and I had a near encounter with pretty raw chicken on my plate, at which point lunch was over for me. I REFUSE TO BE SICK!

Tonight, we take our first night train to Kanyakumari, the Southernmost tip of India. When we asked Chris Hall (our prof) about the train and the washrooms on it, he just chuckled and said "You'll see." So, that's it for now, if I survive tonight I'll tell you all about my first experience on the train in India!