A Curry Affair

(That’s the slogan for Kerala tourism, and I can’t say I disagree)

Annie, Dailey, and I headed out last Saturday on our final Indian trip: Kerala. After a stressful 2 weeks of wrapping up classes and final exams, we were very ready. We flew into Cochin in the late afternoon and found a hotel room for the night for a whopping $10. We woke up the next morning with bugs all over our things, but I guess the price was right? Oh well, when in India, we are flexible.

Sunday morning we hopped on a crowded bus to the city of Alleppey. Because the bus was so crowded I ended up sitting a few rows ahead of Annie and Dailey next to a sweet older Indian woman who didn’t speak any English, but smiled and gestured to me a lot. About halfway through the ride we picked up even more people at a bus stop, including a mother with about 5 or 6 small children. As they crowded to stand on the bus, the woman next to me swiftly scooped up 2 of the kids and put them on her lap, no questions asked, so that they would have a place to sit without being squished. A simple gesture, but for some reason that really made me smile.

We arrived in Alleppey with only one thing on the agenda: houseboatting (Apparently that is the thing to do in Alleppey). We found a tourism office, chose our houseboat and boarded right away, with fresh lime soda as a welcoming beverage. So for about 22 hours we got to ride around the Kerala backwaters, relax, eat the food they cooked for us, walk around at the stops, and enjoy the gorgeous views.

The driver even let me drive!

When the time came to disembark on Monday morning I think we all wished we could have stayed on the boat for a week longer. We were planning to catch a bus to Munnar, but due to timing complications we decided to splurge a little bit and take a cab instead (which actually worked out much better). Munnar is a town up in the mountains, inland from the coast, almost on the border of Tamil Nadu (the neighbouring state) and about a 4-5 hour drive from where we were in Alleppey. It was actually a really beautiful drive, though very curvy. Our cab driver stopped so we could take pictures at all the lovely waterfalls and vantage points.

We arrived in Munnar, found a cute hotel room for $12 a night (that was much nicer than our first one), and had some lunch.

Munnar from the get-go was unlike most of the India that I have come to know. It wasn’t too crowded, and there were quite a few foreigners. Parts of the mountains and trees reminded me of some weird hybrid of Switzerland, camp, and (of course) India. Now, here’s the kicker – Munnar was cold! Well, cold by Indian standards anyway. I would say it was in 60’s during the days in town, and a little cooler when we hiked higher up. I realize this isn’t actually cold, but after 4 and a half months of literal Indian summer, it was kind of surprising – a sensation I have kind of forgotten about (guess I’m in for a rude awakening when I go back to real winter soon…).

The first night we went to a performance of Kathakali Dance, the traditional dance from Kerala. It involved a lot of face paint, facial expressions, and screams (Odd, right? It was a little frightening, but good fun).

The next morning we woke up early and drove up to the top-station, stopping at a gorgeous lake and dam on the way up.

We got up to the top and did a little trekking in the mountains to some viewing points. It was actually quite cold up there, and suuuuuper foggy. We stopped at one point to get some hot noodles from a little canteen.

After the hike back, we stopped at a forest area where we got a chance to ride elephants! Dailey and I rode one named Lakshmi, and she was a sweetheart, even though we were convinced that once or twice she was going to propel us from her back. We (semi-successfully) fed her some pineapples at the end.

I really feel like this Kerala trip was such a perfect way to start to wrap up my time in India. The 3 of us got to reflect, reminisce, and laugh (a lot) on the houseboat, see a different side of India, and start winding down. And now (never thought I would say it) begins my last week in India.

do they come around with cups of chai for everyone in the middle of your 3 hour final exam.

The past 2 weeks have been jam-packed with activities! Let me catch everyone up on what I’ve been doing. Firstly, October 26^th was Diwali, a widely celebrated festival of lights, and one of the major holidays in India and some other countries in the area. We started the day by going to visit one of the many firework shacks that had been set up around town leading up to Diwali.

We learned that the main thing people in India do on Diwali is to visit the temple, dress up, spend time with family, eat fantastic sweets, and set off fireworks. So we wanted to celebrate accordingly, beginning with stocking up on ample fireworks for the evening. Afterwards we went to visit a temple in town that we hadn’t yet seen. It was gorgeous. When we returned we found that our hostel was being decorated to be extra festive! (This is something we had noticed around town as well)

After our Diwali dinner, most of the people from our hostel, with the help of our dining hall boys, went out in front of our hostel and played with some smaller fireworks and sparklers. It was so funny how at home, something like this would be absolutely banned from campus, but here everyone, including our directors, were encouraging us to play with fireworks. After we had exhausted the group supplies, a few of us went over to the main campus where a big party was happening on the main amphitheater.

We went and danced with some of the Indian students, and some friends set off some serious fireworks!

When the party fizzled out we still had some of our fun little fireworks left, so we went to find a place to play on a side road on campus, where a few other people were lighting sparklers as well. When we got there, there was a whole family just walking through campus, watching, it seemed. We had plenty of fireworks so we invited them to join us. It was SO much fun to watch the little girl get so excited while we lit sparklers and flower pots and whistlers. By the end of the night I was exhausted, but with a warm heart. That one’s gonna go down in the books as one of the top 10 best days of my life.

Just a few days later, we got to celebrate an American holiday that hasn’t quite picked up here: Halloween. For the Halloweekend we were invited to a party by a group of Americans working in Hyderabad. It was amusing. Especially to see what kind of costumes people came up with from the things that they had. Annie, Dailey, and I went dressed up as a birthday party, a warrior princess, and mother earth respectively.

Two days later, on actual Halloween, we all dressed up again. In new costumes this time. I decided to be Kingfisher, a play on the Indian Kingfisher beer and Kingfisher Airlines.

Some of the program directors brought over their kids, dressed up, to trick-or-treat from room to room in our hostel. It was really exciting to be around kids on Halloween :)

Two days later the SIP Program (Study in India) that we all of us international students are a part of, had our end of semester cultural show. It was more or less a talent show for people taking dance, language, or music classes to show off what they’ve learned this semester.

Those of us not performing got to dress up in our saris and be a part of the welcoming committee. We got to welcome the students, friends, and even US Consulate members who came to watch.

I felt so beautiful in my sari, but man, I don’t know how Indian women wear them so often! First of all, there was no way I could put it on myself – I had to get help from one of the Hindi teachers. And then I was paranoid all night that it was going to fall off. Luckily, that was not the case.

Just another successful week livin’ in India.