Vanilla County

Here are some of Sarah's emailed impressions of Vanilla County, our home stay near Wagamon, in the Western Ghats:

"We are now in the mountains staying at a homestay called 'Vanilla County'. There is a website you can google to see a picture and description. It's in the Western Ghat mountains. Needless to say, it's incredible as everything here is. It's a nice contrast to the austere convent in the middle of a poor, crowded city - here it is quiet, cool, lots of flowers, palms, jungle - the home is very luxurious in a nice old-fashioned way. We swam at a beautiful pool in a mountain stream today (see earlier post, "Swimming in the River"), and our guide picked vanilla, cardamom, cocoa, and black pepper berries and showed us the rubber tapping which is the big industry here (see earlier post, "Rubber").

Our kind and friendly hosts are cooking us more delicious Keralan food including exotic vegetables which we have never had before. Tomorrow we take a tour and then we will go to an ashram which is a famous Christian retreat 10k from here. "

[This small balcony and a large one beyond were both outside Sarah and my room. Nicholas and Peter had a separate room and bath. The bit of railing in the foreground is part of a large deck accessible from the second floor hall.]

Trucks

There's got to be a coffee table book somewhere about these brightly painted trucks. I was reminded of the photographic studies that I've seen of Pennsylvania barns and Amish hex symbols. Like the autorickshaws and buses, many of the trucks celebrate religious themes. Others look like they just advertise the driver/owners name.

Emerald Isle and the Alleppey backwaters

Bullock Cart Ride - Tamil Nadu

A few miles inside the state of Tamil Nadu, which borders Kerala. A very early morning tour around a sprawling plantation in the flatlands east of the Western Ghats. Like many park rangers around the Periyar Tiger Preserve, our guide was a former elephant poacher who was arrested and given a job as a guide and wildlife protector. He had a bit of a Gandhi look about him, and he played a haunting melody on a wooden flute after our brief white bread and cheese lunch next to a small Hindu temple under a banyan tree at the edge of a rushing river.

Monkeys

Cute? Definitely. Lovable? Perhaps. Shopkeepers in Kumily took aim at the monkeys with slingshots, even as Sarah fed one of them an orange. They are clearly a nuisance. Our hotel in Kumily advised keeping doors and windows closed when not in the room because monkeys might come in and steal items, ala the movie Night at the Museum.

At the Periyar Tiger Preserve, one of them grabbed Sarah's purse and tore it because it smelled an orange in the bag. A mug shot of the offender, or at least its accomplice, is pictured here.

Hindus

These figures were guarding a tall Hindu statue in Tamil Nadu, at the site of our bullock cart ride. Below are a couple of Hindu temples located in Home of Hope's neighborhood, Palluruthy.

At the temples we saw men in dhotis and body paint sitting inside the dank, overgrown temple buildings shredding flowers into colorful piles for worship.

Muslims

About half of Kerala is Christian--the most Christian state in India--with the rest mostly Hindu with some Muslim. The autorickshaw at left, with a picture of a mosque painted on the back window, was dropping off students at Auxilium, the Catholic primary school that shares facilities with the orphanage.
We were in Kerala during Ramadan, and each morning and evening we could hear the call to prayer from a mosque. Did I say morning? Like 4AM in Kumily, in the mountains, which seemed to be more Muslim-dominated than Cochin. The morning of our bullock cart ride we had to get up around 5AM. With the call to prayer gently echoing around the edges of dawn (poetic!) we shuffled out to the front entrance of our hotel to wait for our ride. Looking up into the dimly lit, nearly starless sky, we saw an upside crescent moon with a single star perfectly centered above the bowl of the crescent--the classic star and crescent symbol of Islam. A really memorable moment. Four national flags use the star and crescent by the way--Turkey, Malaysia, Tunisia and Pakistan.

Communists

Chinese Fishing Nets

The Chinese Fishing Nets are perhaps the best-known tourist attraction in Cochin. Unfortunately, according to the guy in the orange shirt, the fishing ain't so good these days. Consequently, tourists are the big catch. Although not required, it was pretty clearly understood that a tip was expected after the gang allowed us to help pull in the net, hold a fish, and generally be part of the experience. Throughout our trip we tipped guides and drivers. The amounts were very small by U.S. standards--for instance, 200 rupees per day ($5) for our driver, who was at our disposal 24 hours a day, and 50 rupees to guides at Periyar Tiger Reserve.

One thing that struck us while doing the tourist trail in Cochin is how the guidebooks tend to characterize all the sites in bland, westernized terms--see the palace with its works of art, sample the local fare along the dock, etc. etc. What they fail to emphasize, however, is just how non-western and strikingly different India is from the usual First World tourist experience. Dust, noise, trash, smoke, poverty, decay, traffic, confusion, colors, language barrier, rudimentary services--all very exciting, exhilarating and decidedly non-western.

Broadway, Ernakulam

The sisters at Home of Hope directed Sarah to Broadway, in downtown Ernakulam, to purchase cross-stitching materials and other fabric-related items. In particular, they recommended Jos & Company.

I believe Sarah purchased gooseberries at this cart. They were not ripe and not so good, but we understand that the sisters cooked them up into something palatable.

Onam is sort of like Hindu Thanksgiving, with Christmas-type sales in all the shops. We missed the holiday by about a month, but there were still signs everywhere and Sarah purchased some Happy Onam greeting cards.
I took the opportunity here to explain the meaning of "don't upset the apple cart" to Nicholas and Peter.

And here's a shot of Broadway Lane, off Broadway.