Vancouver at last

Finally we're home. I've unpacked, and most of my things are put away for the next trip. :)

Here's a finished map that shows our crazy wanderings. The really long, straight lines are flights we took, the fat squiggly lines are trains, and the skinny lines are on cars, buses or motorcycle.

Dubai and Abu Dhabi

We arrived in Dubai in the afternoon after a 3 hour flight from Mumbai. As soon as we stepped out of the airport we were stricken with the realization that we had no idea what to do, or where to go. Our plan consisted of this:

• spend 5 hours in Dubai
• take bus to Abhu Dhabi
• visit Leah's friends Farhad and Leila
• stay overnight in Abhu Dhabi
• take bus back to Dubai
• catch flight to Mumbai

This is a solid plan. But there's no meat. What do we do in Dubai? What do we want to see? Neither of us had any idea what might be in the least interesting to see or do in Dubai, let alone how to get to those places. These thoughts run through our minds as we stand outside the airport, our sunburns fresh from Goa.

Thank goodness for tourist offices, and we managed to get into the markets where we explored the sprawling trading areas of Dubai where every store - no matter what else is advertised - sells watches. Men constantly approached us trying to get us to buy these watches, and I wondered more than once, who buys all those watches? There must be millions of watches on display at any given moment in Dubai, so somebody is buying them.

We met up with Leila on her way back to Abu Dhabi from Syria, and we met with Farhad when we arrived. They took us out for a huge feast, of which I don't think we ate even half of it. That night, they had arranged for us to stay with a friend of a friend who was renting a spare-room, we were so thankful to have a nice place to lay our heads that night after a very shaky sleep on the night-train the evening before.

Abu Dhabi

The next day Leila took us around town and showed us the Emirates Palace, a hotel of such opulence and beauty that we just walked around with our jaws open. We also visited a historical village, where artisans worked on glass blowing, sword making and a couple other things. That evening we hung out with Farhad and Leila, and then at around 2am we caught the bus to Dubai - so we could make our 8.30am flight home.

Kanniyakumari and Goa

We were going to take a bus from Kumily to Madurai, so we could catch a train down to Kanniyakumari, but as we waited for the bus we were approached by a taxi driver who was returning a car back to Madurai as some tourist had paid for the 4 hour trip. So we jumped at the chance to have a stop-free, private ride - it cost 100 rupees each instead of 40 but that's okay - 100 rupees is about $2.50. The ride was comfy, and when we got to Madurai, we found out that trains are not very frequent to Kanniyakumari so we decided to take a bus; we didn't realize this would be a 6 hour bus ride.

Butts-aching, we arrived in Kanniyakumari only to find that all the hotels listed in our out-of-date guidebook were full so the bus driver just dropped us off at a crappy hotel. We resolved to stay there and move in the morning to a better place.

Kanniyakumari

The next morning we did move, to the Lakshmi tourist hotel and we had a great room, with a view of the ocean and the monuments out on the water. We relaxed that day, lazily wandering around in the knowledge that we had another day in town to do the normal tourist stuff. Unfortunately when we booked our train to Kochi we found out we were wrong, and had mixed up our dates...instead of leaving in a day, we were leaving at 5am the next morning.

That meant we had to get as much into the evening as possible, so we rushed to get the train ticketing resolved, and then headed out to the sunset point to watch the sun go down. Sadly, it wasn't a great night for this and the sun gave a lackluster performance, but we had fun eating ice-cream and playing in the water.

The next day we caught that 5am train to Kochi, and from there flew to Goa. At the airport, we realized how big Goa is, and decided that it wouldn't be possible to visit Leah's friend Kimberley again - who had settled herself in Palolem - it being about 65km away. So we settled on Benaulim, a little town about 10km from Margao where we were to catch the night train to Mumbai the next evening.

We stayed at a little guest house called Caroline, and just walked around on the beach the next day. It was quite interesting to be in this place, a weird mix of western culture and indian culture. It is definitely India-lite - this would be a very easy place to visit, although I think tourists might find themselves wondering if there was more India somewhere else. The few street-touts that we encountered had fantastically inflated prices, which makes sense if most of the tourists have no idea what things really cost in India. We had lots of fun knocking vendors down to less than a tenth of the original price.

We grabbed the night train from Goa to Mumbai, and then got straight on the plane to Dubai.

Kumili and the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary

So we left Kochi on February 7th, taking a train to Kottayam. The plan was to use Kottayam as a launching point to get to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary - and we were a little divided on how to go about that. I was hoping it would be possible to rent a motorcycle and drive out there, and Leah wanted to keep it simple. In the end, simplicity won out because it would have been terrifically difficult to ride a cycle out there.

The train to Kottayam went by easily enough and we checked into the Ambassador Hotel. It was insanely hot, and the room at the hotel acted as a pressure cooker. We ate at some arabian restaurant, and here we ate chicken - one of the few times we had meat out there.

The next morning, after handling some administrative bits about flights and train times, we caught the bus to Kumily and were guided to the Jungle View guest house. This was our first home-stay and it was probably one of the nicest places we stayed at in all of India, and definitely not the most expensive at 350 rupees a night. The owner, Ramachandra took us for a night walk around his compound and we sat in the dark for about 20 minutes waiting for animal life to come around. We saw a couple porcupines, but nothing spectacular; at least the night wasn't took cold.

Periyar Nature Walk

The next day, Abbas dropped off a motorcycle for us and we rode it into Periyar to go on the nature walk at 7am. Since Abbas was late dropping off the cycle, we almost didn't make it into a group but we managed to squeeze in at the last minute. The nature walk was really cool - it was 3 hours and because it was quite early in the morning the sun wasn't too hot. We saw two types of monkey, some wild boar, and wild elephants.

India Motorcycles: Cumbum, Tamil Nadu

After the nature walk, we took the motorcycle into the country. I didn't really know how much fuel we would need, so I put in 5L of gas and we roared off into the middle of nowhere. Our first plan was to go to the tea factory - and everyone seemed to have an opinion on how to get there so after a few missed turns we managed to find it. The tea factory was quiet due to a power outage, but the manager was very pleasant and he took us to each of the machines and explained how they worked. Or used hand signals and very simple english really, but we asked clever questions and basically figured it out.

We got some ice cream in town, and the owner of the shop gave us some advice for an alternative way back to Kumily - this time through Tamil Nadu, the neighboring province. This turned out to be a great ride from the highlands where we were, into a hot valley and back out into the mountains again.

Kerala Backwaters

Kerala Backwaters

We took the standard tour from the KTDC office - and headed out into the backwaters with 10 other tourists. We rode in a bus to a little stop where we got into two huge canoes - and sat on plastic deck chairs. Weird. Two men pushed the canoe through narrow waterways and we snapped pictures of whatever looked interesting.

Strangely, the backwaters are heavily populated which meant the canoe passed people doing laundry in the water, and even a man bathing. About 45 minutes into it we get out of the canoes and they walk us inland where a guy climbs a huge coconut tree and hauls down enough coconuts for all of us - then another man chops it open and we savour the sweet freakiness that is coconut juice. Lastly, they crack it open and we eat the coconut goodness inside.

After a bit more canoeing, we switch to a houseboat that cruises around the islands and we got a tour of an island calcium factory, and some info on common medicinal uses for local plants. It was terrifically boring, but they fed us some great Keralan food so we were happy. :)

Here is a map of India that I stole from a website to show you where we've been. I'll do this properly at some point with a map that has all the names of places we stopped at.

You can see the weird roundabout route we're taking - we started in Mumbai, went to Aurangabad first, then darted back to Mumbai so we could go to Jaipur. From there we went west to Pushkar, Jodhpur, and Jaisalmer, and then down to Udaipur. From there we went south to Ahmedabad, had that long flight to Bangalore, and then made our way through Mysore, the Nilgiri Blue Mountains (in blue) and then today in Kochi on the southern west coast.

Kochi at last!

At long last, after days and days of insane travelling that now seems so far away, we have made it to Kochi. We're staying at a place called Bijus in Ernakulam - a nice enough hotel close to the waterfront.

Altogether, in the last two days we have done this:

Jan 31: night train from Udaipur to Ahmedabad
Feb 1: flight from Ahmedabad to Bangalore
Feb 1: train from Bangalore to Mysore in the evening
Feb 3: bus from Mysore to Ooty
Feb 3: train from Ooty to Coimbatore
Feb 4: train from Coimbatore to Kochi

Writing it out, it doesn't seem like so much but we sure were beat until that sleepy night in Coimbatore. We had actually tried to change our train into a sleeper that night, but now I'm sure we're both very happy we got some sleep instead of the half-sleep we get on trains.

We walked around Kochi tonight and wandered into a little pavilion that was selling stuff at Indian prices. This was quite neat for us so we snapped up a few souveniers and then went for dinner and ice-cream. That's it for now, I'll flesh out these posts with pictures tomorrow.

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The Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway

Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway

We took a 5 hour bus ride through some crazy mountain jungle between Mysore and Udhagamandalam (Ooty), and then jumped on the Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway which is such a famous rail-line that it has been declared a historic site by UNESCO. It is quite a neat contraption - the engines use a cog-driven system to climb and descent a ladder between the rails, up to gradients of 1 in 12.5. I'm not entirely sure what this should tell us, but I can tell you that the train was definitely on a serious angle going up and down those mountains.

Also, it is a steam engine because of the unique design. The end result of this is hot, humid steam air and the occaisional ember flying into the windows.

I have to say though, that being a tall man on this train was not easy, as the seats are clearly designed for children so I had to sit nearly across the bench seat, not leaving much room for Leah. I tried various positions but eventually I just gave up on comfort for four hours.

The views from the train were indeed tremendous, as the railway clambers through some very high mountain passes, and it goes through something like 16 tunnels which the local boys love screaming and chanting in as we pass through.

Bangalore and Mysore

After the cycle trip we took a night-train to Ahmedabad so we could catch a 2 hour flight to Bangalore, so we could take a 3 hour train to Mysore. It was a hellish journey, made so mostly because Leah's stomach chose the night-train as the right moment to start its inevitatable churning and gurgling.

Our first experience with the famed Delhi Belly, and it left Leah quite wobbly the rest of the day. The problem for me is twofold, first I'm trying to take care of a sick woman who would probably much rather lie in bed than take planes, trains and auto-rickshaws, but also that I forgot to eat all day because Leah wasn't chirping up that we should eat. Strange as it might seem, but I have grown into the habit of using her belly to tell us when to eat because mine is strangely mute here.

It isn't that I don't get hungry, when we eat I'm chowing down. But it just isn't the same as in Vancouver - it might just be the oddly planned days we're having. Anyway by the end of the night I had gone the whole day eating just one samosa, and when I realised this I tried to eat, but couldn't jam anything in.

Sleep restored us both to good spirits the next day, and we stormed Mysore in search of the internet, and sunglasses for Leah; who seems to lose them often. :) In the evening we met her brother's new fiance Katarina - she's lovely and we had coffee with her in the little Mysore suburb she lives in. Katarina is on some kind of a yoga training course, and there certainly seems to be quite a bit of that here!