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02 September 2011

Fort Cochin and Mattancherry

With not much to do my last day in Kerala, I just went for a wander around the neighborhood I was staying in - Fort Cochin - and the slightly busier neighboring Mattancherry. It was raining pretty torrentially, so I didn't get to take as many photos as I wanted, but you're probably grateful for that...

The same beach I was at earlier, in moodier weather.This area apparently had a small wave from the 2004 tsunami.

Doing laundry in ankle-deep rainwater...

Laundry 'drying' in the rain. Notice anything missing? (I didn't, and the guy in the corner there pointed out to me that there are no clothespins holding the clothes up - the line's made from a sticky fiber that holds the clothes up on it)

Do these windows look like eyes to anyone else?

Looking down on Mattancherry. I loved walking around in Mattancherry, but unfortunately that was also the rainiest time.

Blue ginger for ... candy, I think? This is what happens when you edit your photos months after the fact.

Books for sale.

The fishing nets by day.

So that's about it for chilled out, monsoon drenched Kerala; the next day I was off to Mysore with a backpack full of slightly damp clothes. In retrospect, I wish I'd planned a slightly more ambitious itinerary for my six days there, instead of just staying based in the same town - there's definitely so much more to see that I just didn't, but I think I was exhausted by the time I got to India in the first place, having been living out of an overstuffed backpack since leaving Japan in March. So, mostly I'm just happy I got to see any of India, albiet in a slightly lazy way, and hopefully I'll go back someday for longer, possibly during drier times.

01 September 2011

Munnar

Another day trip out of Fort Cochin is a visit to the former British hill station and tea plantation of Munnar. Day trip might be a bit of a stretch - at three and a half hours away, most of the day was spent driving there.

Munnar was very pretty, and it was nice to get up into the mountains; but mostly the visit revolved around taking photos of, drinking and buying tea. (Pretty good tea, though!)

I was also really happy to see that India apparently uses the same route markers as Vietnam!

Also, quite randomly, this group of Indian dudes asked for a group photo when we were stopped to admire to the view. So at least there's one photo of me in India!

31 August 2011

Backwaters

One of the main tourist activities in Kerala seems to be boat tours of the Backwaters, or the network of canals and rivers connecting towns and villages throughout the state. I had mixed feelings about going on a cruise - I always feel a little creepy going on tours where the main attraction seems to be staring at locals just trying to go about their daily lives, and the motorized tourist boats are polluting the rivers - but to be honest, there isn't a huge amount to do in Fort Cochin, and my curiosity won out (the boat I went on, as it turned out, was rowed by two guys rather than motorized, so at least I could feel less guilty on the environmental front).

The morning of the tour, I woke up to the sound of the heavy rain drumming on the roof: the first day of the monsoon, which just yesterday my hotel guy had sworn was due in two weeks. (This turned out to be the first of many lies I heard about the monsoon; others include: it only rains in the morning, and it only rains for two hours at a time). Fortunately, our boat was covered, unlike the much tinier boat in the photo above.

above: doing laundry in the rain

Though I didn't take too many photos of it, a cruise along the backwaters puts you literally in the backyard of the people who live along the rivers, and it was definitely interesting to catch glimpses of people waiting for their ferries to the mainland or kids playing cricket along the shore. Hopefully they didn't find our boat's presence too intrusive. Most people who saw us waved, though there was one man who'd hung a stern NO PHOTOS sign over his window and who came outside to glare at us as we went past.

The rain was so heavy that a lot of my photos are kind of blurry from it, but as you can hopefully tell nonetheless, the backwaters were really beautiful, even in the monsoon:

30 August 2011

Indian sunset

above: the bin's painted 'use me!' sign went largely disregarded.

After leaving Vietnam, Iain had to rush back to Scotland to attend a stag party, and I went to India by myself for a too-fast ten-day visit before joining him. I've wanted to visit India for years, but with only ten days, I decided to forgo the famous sites in favor of something a little more chilled out. I chose Kerala for no special reason other than that one of my favorite novels was set there, but it turned out to be a pretty awesome place.

Though the whole visit was awesome, my favorite day in India was probably the first day, before the monsoon hit, where I wandered around Fort Cochin aimlessly and watched the sunset on the beach amidst the crowds of families.

(and also nuns)

Chinese fishing nets.

I'm so late in blogging about India that I can no longer remember all the things I wanted to blog about, but I'll try to post a few more photos, at least. And then maybe, eventually, this blog can fall back in sync with real time?

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