The final leg of our Indian epic

Houseboat in Kerala
Originally uploaded by rtw2007.

So, we have reached Chennai (or Madras as it used to be called), breathed a sigh of relief and collapsed into the nearest available coffee shop (where we are enjoying watching two Pakistani batsmen giving India an absolute beating… though we have to stay quiet about enjoying this, for fear of getting lynched). This gives us the opportunity to recount the events of the last couple of weeks (and upload more photos and videos to the website).

We eventually dragged ourselves away from beautiful Agonda beach and somewhat reluctantly returned to the Indian roads, setting off south towards Kerala. On the map the journey looks simple 600km (2 days) south following Highway 17 all the way. But in reality it was anything but simple. The driving was the worst that either of has ever seen; really terrible, even by (appalling) Indian standards. A very long, thin single carriage way that is dominated by incredibly dangerous, crazy buses (with names like “Superspeed” and “Cannonball”) which plough up and down the wrong side of the road, often veering onto two wheels due to the bounciest suspension imaginable, with the horn blaring continuously to make sure that every other vehicle jumps out of the way in fear of its life. Add into the mix a number of bridges that aren’t wide enough, plus lots of ineffectual road repairs with ineffectual contra flows managed by exceedingly ineffectual policeman wearing safari suits, and you start to get the picture.

After two very stressful and long driving days we eventually reached Kochi, the tourist hub of Kerala, where we parked up outside a friendly guesthouse and took advantage of some nice restaurants and a picturesque natural harbour. The highlights of the harbour are the remarkable Chinese fishing nets: huge home-made wooden cantilevered constructions, each manned by a team of eight to ten men. They lower the whole net into the estuary using a complex system of counterweights, then a pair of chaps scurry along the wooden beams to watch the fish gather. After a suitable period of time, the chaps give a signal and everyone starts heaving, pulling the whole wooden frame and net contraption out of the water. A bizarre but interesting way of providing fresh fish to the town. We also submitted ourselves to a traditional local Ayuverdic massage. We don’t want to go into the details, but it involved too much nakedness, too much cheap olive oil, too much hard plastic and not even a shower afterwards.

The road from Kochi leads to Alleppey where we had pre-booked a Keralan house-boat to celebrate Helen’s 30th birthday. The boat was a traditional rice-barge, impressively made by hand from strips of wood bent into arches and tied with coir-rope. We had a crew of three, two men to punt us down the backwaters and a chef (all wearing checked sarongs, as is traditional for the men in these parts). The boat itself was very simple, but we glad to stand out from the large, noisy motor cruisers that dominate the main canals. Being smaller, we were able to drift through some of the narrower backwaters past quiet, leafy villages, schools, shops and houses. The whole experience was surprisingly peaceful for India – in fact the quietest and most relaxing place we have been in the whole country. At around five o’clock we made our way across a large lake and then moored up on the far side for the night, enjoying fresh south Indian food as the sun went down. After Helen opened her birthday cards from home, we whiled away the evening lying on the day bed at the front of the boat reading and drinking cold beer. After Alleppey we spent a few nights at another tourist resort called Varkala, not as picturesque as Agonda but with more big waves to jump around in for Michael. There was also, strangely, an excellent Nepali restaurant where we spent most of our time, eating and reading (Michael has become addicted to reading second hand Dervla Murphy travel books).

From there we made the final push down to Kanyakumari and the south cape of India. The road comes to an abrupt end at a memorial to Mahatma Gandhi, with a view out to the meeting of three seas (Arabian Sea, Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean) and an odd version of the Statue of Liberty standing out on an island off the coast. To celebrate both our arrival at the south tip and Michael’s 30th birthday, we bought a big supply of gaudy Indian fabric flowers and some cold beer; drove to ‘Sunset Point’; and decked the van and ourselves out in flowers. A bemused Roman Catholic prayer group, who had been paying their respects to the Mary Magdalene statue at Sunset Point, joined our party: they weren’t quite sure what was going on but seemed very over excited about standing in our photos and wearing our flowers. We slept right at the end of the continent – disturbed only by a group of chavs on motorbikes, two fishermen practising martial arts with their big sticks and a group of policeman who were ‘trying to protect us’ from the local scallies.

The nature of reaching the end of the road means that there is nothing to do apart from turn around, so we started our 4th decades (!!) by heading north again. We briefly visited the huge, colourful temples of Madurai, realizing in the process that our temple tolerance has now been fully exceeded. Then back to the coast and the former French enclave of Pondicherry. We stayed in a lovely converted colonial building, enjoying the wide European style streets, nice restaurants and a pleasant sea-front promenade. ‘Pondy’ prides itself on providing a very different standard of living to the rest of the country and it was a very enjoyable place to while away a few days. There is still a French flag flapping away above the consulate in the centre of town; lots of colonial French buildings and French street signs; croissants aplenty; and the policemen even wear bright red gendarme’s caps. Outside the main town we also visited the experimental community of Auroville – set up in the 1960s by a lady who, rather presumptuously, went by the moniker of ‘The Mother’. People from all the nations of the world live at Auroville in harmony, plant trees, make cheese and gather round a huge golden golf ball to meditate. The community and ideas are actually very interesting although most of the available information glosses over The Mother’s belief that she was paving the way for the evolution of a new species of ‘super humans’. Rather odd…