The night before Sher and I were to fly to Kerala we couldn't sleep. Who knows why. Sher was very unhappy to be so tired while we were travelling, but to me it just felt like jetlag. Up all night? Waiting in an airport? Standard operating procedure. Especially when traveling on the opposite side of the world. So I was fine. Glazed, dazed, and numb, but fine with it. Sher perked up a bit when we took off -- it was only his second time on an airplane (the first being our trip to Bangalore) -- and we could spot our neighborhood from the plane.

We landed in Kochin 50 minutes later. This was just a stopover and we weren't allowed off the plane. We managed to go stand on the rollaway staircase near the back of the plane though -- incredibly loud, because the engines were idling, but the air was hot --85 degrees -- and humid. We were 6 degrees north of the equator on the ocean. Palm trees everywhere. It was tempting to get off here and do Kochin now, but we'd decided at the last minute to start further south and work our way north, so off we flew again, landing 30 minutes later in ... well, the current name for the place is much too long to pronounce, let alone type, but the Brits called it Trivandrum, which I can manage. From there it is just a 20 minute taxi ride to the black sands of Kovalum.

I was expecting the worst. Kovalum has a world wide (supposedly) reputation as a beach resort, which is not really a plus in my book. But Sher had never been to the ocean and I really did want a do nothing vacation for at least a few days and ... I was so jetlagged now I really didn't mind the idea of surf and sand at all. We cruised by one of the hotels I had in mind -- ugly! -- and I called out to stop at the second -- a lovely hand carved wood and ironwork building. New, but old style. We were the only guests, this being off-season. (Season is mid-winter.) We took the best room, top floor, amazing view of a wild black rocked green mossed cove with thundrous surf and a pink mosque built at the very tip of the far peninsula. The entire wall to the balcony was windows: we opened all of them and then lay on the cool tile balcony. Sher had a headache, but eventually ... he fell asleep. At last! Luxuriating in the smell of clean ocean air and the amazing crash of the surf -- loud enough to muffle even Sher's snores! -- I too passed out.

But not for long. Amazingly, Sher was up in an hour. Ugh! He wanted to go walking, see this beach. (The cove we could see from our hotel was not THE beach.) So off we went. Typical tourist shops lined the tiny road down to the sand. Jewelry, carpets, fabrics, typical tourist shop stuff, much of it from Rajasthan. Fairly nice quality though. We didn't stop. We walked past the lighthouse -- a big red and white painted brick thing straight out of New England, unfortunately off limits. And came out on the beach. It was very narrow. Maybe 1 kilometer long, and only 50 feet across. But steep: that's why it was so narrow. The sand was like the desert in Rajasthan: fine as hourglass sand, it sticks to everything but doesn't blow in the wind. Walking where the waves have just receded the sand compacts under you like you're walking on the crust of a souflee -- it gives way with a chilling crunch. Very cool.

This was (appropriately) Lighthouse beach, and it was a lovely crescent shape, lined with bamboo mat restaurants and palm fronted hotels. Two restaurants advertised free movies that night: Austin Powers and Life is Beautiful. Appeal to both ends. We sat in the shade of a restaurant that offered items under the heading "tit bits" and "chopusy" (that's "tidbits" and "chop suey," if you couldn't guess) and drank amazing fresh pappaya juice and grape juice that puts all American grape juice to shame.

Sher decided he was ready to brave the ocean so we hiked back to our hotel for our swimsuits, and then made our way to one of two places where it was safe to swim. There were lifeguards and red warning flags to make sure people were careful, especially important because most Indians do NOT know how to swim. I asked one lifeguard how far out I could swim and he said as far as I liked, since I COULD swim. But then a second lifeguard said I'd better not, because others would try to follow me.

Only men were swimming. I saw a few Indian women walk in up to their waist, fully dressed in their beautiful salwars (long dresses over pants with a scarf), but none really playing in the water. All the foreigners I saw (and there were many) were only sunbathing. Which meant that the several dozen people in the water were all Indian men. They were having a grand old time, bouncing up and down in the waves. Sher and I joined them.

It is really a very odd beach. The shore is so narrow and steep that I thought the ocean would get deep right away, but it doesn't. Instead it goes up and down, shallow and less shallow and shallow again in no particular pattern that I could discover. More, the topography was entirely changing with every wave. That fine black sand would shift almost as fast as the water: up 6 inches, down a foot. Disconcerting, but fun. And of course the waves did their thing, caressing your ankles on moment and your breasts the next. Oh I forgot to say: the temperature of the ocean was perfect. Absolutely lovely warm.

But we didn't discover the coolest thing about Kovalum until dinner. We were seated at one of the restaurants (Coconot Grove, so named, possibly, because half of the pillers holding up its roof were live coconut trees, their trucks painted bright blue to match said pillers) when something caught our eye. Out in the sea. The water was black except for the bright white of the crashing foam, caught in the almost full moonlight. But what caught our eye wasn't the normal wave crests. There was something else. What was it? Whoosh! There it was again! A lightning fast undulation in the water, like a sea serpent scooting along, just under the surface. Then two of them whizzing towards each other and erupting in a fountain of spray. What was it?? We stared, entranced.

Sometimes, but not every time, the incoming waves, advancing at their normal leisurely pace, would suddenly get goosed from side, and like someone was shaking out the blanket of the sea, a ripple would run sideways along the crest of the wave. And it would go FAST. Sometimes 30 mph. Sometimes 200! Sometimes they'd start slow and then race to the end, often colliding with another crest coming from the opposite side. Like a giant picking up a big piece of string right under the crest of the wave: the sides come up slowly and then TWANG the string is pulled suddenly tight and the water in the middle shoots straight up like a fountain. It was a fabulous show. Much better than the so called Dancing Fountains India likes to put in its parks.

And all the better for being completely unexpected and unexplained. So....have you figured out what it was? I figured it must be caused by the topography: some curve in the sea floor making the incoming waves ripple. Bzzzz! Wrong. The answer was obvious in daylight. The phenomenon was caused by the curve of the beach. The waves come in flat but the tight curve means they land sideways. So the retreat sideways. And -- maybe because the beach is so steep? -- their retreat forms its own wave. This retreating wave intersects with the incoming waves and, in perfect example of doubling amplitude: sea monsters! Frankly, it didn't look like much in daylight, but at night when the retreating wave was the same invisible black as the sea and the only thing visible was the cresting foam....well. Fun fun fun.

So. We enjoyed Kovalum. Much as I loved the view and symphony from our hotel room, we switched to another hotel the next night, one right on the main beach with tv and a BATH (four months since I had a TUB!) and a POOL! Oh yes, and in-hotel ayurvedic massage. :-) It wasn't perfect of course. The water came into the tub only luke warm, cooling dramatically while more water trickled in. But I knew how to fix that, having encountered the exact same thing many times before: order them to bring buckets of hot water and pour that in. YEAH! Hot bath at last! (Albeit rust colored. Whatever.) And room service could not get our orders right. I wanted cold milk that had been boiled first. No problem. A glass of steaming hot milk arrives. No, I asked for COLD milk that ONCE was hot. In a BOWL. No problem. A tea pitcher arrives. Sher's tea? NO. HOT milk, in a tea pitcher. I gave up and had my cereal with hot milk. Sher waited 90 minutes for his tea (one hour in the room, half an hour by the pool) and then we went out for tea that took 2 minutes.....

About the only other negative bit was the way the men stared at me. At all foreign women there, I'm sure. Very openly sexual and very uncomfortable. But there wasn't much I could do about it. Except make sure Sher was right beside me, which helped immensely.

We stayed 2 days, and then caught a taxi north. Through Trivandrum to Varkala, where a German tourist had told Sher he'd ridden elephants. Bingo!! It was about a two hour drive, though poor but pretty countryside and villages, rice paddies (a few anyway) and palm trees (everywhere). Varkala is a tiny Kovalum wannabe. We scoped the hotels. There was the Taj, $105/night. And there were the others: from $2-10/night. One, the Eden garden, was set around a pool of water with little islands for dinner tables and the serenade of crickets and flowing water. But the rooms were barely bigger than the beds, the bathrooms barely serviceable and .... we ended up at the Taj. At the Indian national rate: $60.

The Taj is one of India's luxury chain of hotels, and it is completely Lux. Enormous pool with built in bar. Gymnasium, jacuzzi (which I didn't discover till it was closed, damn!), tennis, ping-pong, etc. etc.... But the best thing? No, there's no bath, amazingly. But the shower!! AHHHH! Hot water! Really truly hot. And lots of it. Worth the whole $60 right there. :-) The things you take for granted in America!

And oh yes, about those elephants. Sher found a fellow in Verkala who took us out this afternoon. It is a half hour (12 Km) drive to a place with 6 or 7 elephants. Big ones. Several with tusks. We rode one named Babu. A 30 year old male, very sweet, very gentle. I sat on his neck (HOORAY!!!!!!) with my bare toes wiggling happily against his velvety ears, and Sher sat just behind me. Every step Babu took, his massive shoulderblades rearranged themselves underneath us. ;-) It was delightful. Sher enjoyed it ok, but was sore before our hour was up. I was too, a bit, but who cares?! We stopped part-way through the ride at a house where Babu always stops: because the people who live there always have treats for him. In this case a bunch of bananas and 4 fistfuls of gaur -- pure cane suger! Mmmmm! Babu trumpeted his thanks.

Tomorrow I go back to ride another elephant and I should get to help bath them. :-)

Meanwhile, even as I appreciate the India that has elepants for rent for $5/hour, I am happy to spend a few days completely outside of India at this hotel, because this hotel does not feel like India. More like Fantasy Island, set on a hilltop above an ocean of palm trees, not a glimpse of civilization (let alone poverty!) in sight. But it is just what I need. (Between elephant rides, at least!)

Ok, that catches you up to the present. Good night from Verkala!

Amendment: I tried to send this from the Taj right after I wrote this, squirreled away in the accounting office, but I guess I really AM still in India, because the phone lines refused to connect me. Sigh. I tried a dozen times. Nada. So this will have to get sent later. C'est la vie.

Update: It is the next day and I have a phone connection, though it is probably 10 bytes/second....Let's see if I can send this letter in 30 minutes! So far 4 minutes have passed and I still can only see the top banner of the Yahoo log in screen. I think I'll try telnetting.... Oh. 6 minutes for the login screen to come up.... While I'm waiting...got to ride another elephant today. Cashew was his name, very very sweet 28 year old male. He opened his mouth and let me lay bananas on his slippery smooth tongue. I rode him alone, 10 feet (at least) up, cumfy on his naturally well-cushioned shoulders, getting a double massage from his rotating shoulderblades and constantly batting ears. I rode him to a pool that was unfortunately too full of algae to swim in, but he had fun giving himself a good shower.

Ok, fifteen minutes and I'm still not logged in to Yahoo....Oh -- now I am: 16 minutes! Ok, let's see if this will actually get out! Hope so!

From Verkala (where I last wrote you), we took a train through verdant palm and rice plantations one hour north to Kollam to catch the boat to Allepey.At 10:30 in the morning it was already so hot in the shade that the captain was complaining about the heat, and he's a native! Actually it was more the nearly 100% humidity that was the problem, but once the boat got going, the breeze made things comfortable.

This was a tourist boat, taking an 8 hour cruise through Kerala's famous backwaters where a train made the journey in less than half the time for one twentieth the price. There were 15 of us on the boat: 3 Indians, counting Sher (but not counting the crew of 3), 2 Dutch, 2 French, 2 Italians and one other American. Halfway along we picked up 2 more Americans and 2 Swedes. 8 hours traveling: on a plane or a car it would be hell, but lounging on the canopied roof of a slow boat ... it was like sitting on a lovely balcony with ever changing scenery. Extremely pleasant and relaxing. We trawled slowly past Chinese fishing nets, big spidery contraptions of long sticks poised above the water like patient bugs. Other fisherman paddled or poled by in dug-out canoes, casting and retrieving their yellow and orange nets. We passed from narrow lake to narrower canal to wide lake to another canal, moving from salt water to fresh but always shallow water.

Here's something I don't understand: the tidal variation here is about one and a half vertical feet. How is that possible? Isn't it more like 8 or 10 feet in America? Why would it be different here? Could it have something to do with being close to the equator? No one could explain this to me, but someone added an even stranger fact: they said the small tidal range is seasonal. In winter the tide goes up and down 3-5 feet! How is this possible? If anyone knows, I'd love to be enlightened.

(And while I'm digressing, let me add that we saw a tourist poster of Kovalum beach, and it was wide and gold and flat! The photo was taken at least a few years ago. So Kovalum used to be a normal beach. What happened to it? Did it wash away and they had to bring in truckloads of new (black) sand which got dumped too steeply? Or am I entirely wrong, and is winter high tide lower than the current low tide, giving Kovalum a big beach just in time for the tourist season?)

The banks of the waterways were lush with palms -- coconut, mostly dried and used for oil and making coir (rope) -- and banana, which grow (to my eye) upsidedown, arching upwards. Which brings up another digression: I eat bananas in America, but not too much. Here there are so many different kinds and they all taste so much sweeter and they have so many ways to consume them: Sher's wonderful milkshakes, of course, and sliced and fried over French toast, and battered and fried and eaten on the roadside, and put into banana pancakes, and banana crepes, and ... I can't remember all the other ways I've been eating bananas, but ... mmm. And of course they're great even when they get too ripe and smashed, because you can feed them to elephants! ;-)

The geometry is palm trees is a great survival trait, because people don't need to chop them down to build their houses. From the air the jungle looks trackless and unbroken, empty of human imprint. But once you are beneath the high blanket of coconut palm fronds, you see houses everywhere, scattered between (and sometimes around) the straight clean trunks.

There are few roads among the backwaters, and many houses are accessible only by boat, balanced on narrow strips of land between canal and paddy. Front doors open onto steps into the canal which act as bathtub and kitchen sink. Toilets are tiny bamboo matted structures perched over the water. Young boys (never girls) dive and splash in the water and yell "One pen! One pen!" as we pass. (One boy attempts a whole sentence: "I give you one pen?" Of course he means the opposite.)

The single American on the boat is a swim coach. He points out that the boys in the water aren't really swimming. The can paddle about a bit, but the water is shallow and they mostly bounce on the bottom. No one, practically, in third world countries knows how to swim, he said. Out of the millions and millions of people in Bombay, the swim club has only a handful of members. Even here, where canals and lakes are everywhere, he says no one really swims. Even the fishermen don't know how to swim. Fishermen who go out on rough seas in tiny canoes made of four logs roped together (and unroped into their constituent four logs to dry every night). This is incredible to me, and I think partly based on a very strict definition of swimming. But I remembered the Indians "swimming" at Kovalum, and none of them were in water more than waist deep. And despite vigilant lifeguards, two weeks before a boy had drowned there.

A few hours into the trip the coconut and paddy jungle is broken by a Miami style concrete apartment building soaring 40 floors above the canal. What the hell? It is housing for the thousands upon thousands who visit Kerala's famous "Hugging Mother" guru. Her family owned very little land, so to accommodate the hoards of Indian and foreign visitors, they built UP. It is a garish ugly structure, but the two Americans who spent two weeks there seem oblivious to the fact. Two young married New York Jews, they are entranced by the guru and happily show us pictures and press clippings. To her credit, the guru fights for women's rights and equality and several other good causes. Dark skinned and of a lower caste, she was finally given coverage in a local paper only this week (after decades of being a world famous guru) for speaking at the Millenium Religious Meeting (or whatever it was called) at the UN. (Kerala is so proud of being India's most forward thinking/acting state -- 100% literacy, lowest birth rate in India, no malaraia (and there are GOBS of mosquitoes, what with all the water everywhere) -- but ... they are still a long way from equality.)

We stop for lunch at a tiny shack on the water where our plates are banana palm leaves and rice and pickled curries are slapped down in front of us. Crusty shriveled fish were $.25 each. It all tastes quite good. It's fun to see the tourists who are new to India all nervous about drinking from glasses and so forth as I nonchalantly sip my chai. One should be careful here, yes, but there is no need for paranoia.

In Allepey we check into a hotel with a TV -- it is opening day of the Olympics -- but I am so tired I fall asleep a dozen times trying to watch the opening ceremony.

Allepey is famous for its houseboats. Coverted rice barges, they are like enormous canoes with bamboo mat covers. They look like armadilloes. They are quite beautiful. 24 hours on one is supposed to be 5-9000 Rs ($110-200) but you can get it down to 3500 Rs pretty easily in off season. With some finagling, we got one for 2750 Rs and off we set, our cook in the kitchen in the back, and two polers pushing us along, one in the front, one in the back, like a gondola.

I said the boat from Kollam was like sitting on a porch? This was the same, but even better. Silent and very slow (slower than walking), we slipped along the canals. Our "porch" was full-length arched paneless windows on three sides with curved bamboo matting above. We lay on mattresses sipping chai and watching the greenery slide by. At sunset we anchored in a flotilla of lilly pads at the edge of a great lake and watched the sky turn pink. Lights came on all across the lake: fishermen in their canoes, fishing by lantern-light. It was magical.

We climbed happily into our mosquito-netted bed for the night. And discovered the net had a hole in it. We had already blown out our kerosene lanterns, so squatting the mosquitoes was essentially impossible. We put on my special 100% DEET repellant and for the first time in my experience it had NO effect. (This was before we knew that Kerala was malaria-free.) It was also intensely hot. The water here is so warm, it heats the air all night. Even with all the matted windows open, the breeze was not enough. Sher moved out onto the front "porch", forsaking the dubious mosquito net for more breeze. Neither of us slept much.

At dawn the mosquitoes disappeared and the slight breeze from poling through the water made things wonderful again. Moral of the story: rent a houseboat, yes, but NOT overnight.

The next place we wanted to go was South India's most reputable national park, Periyar, but it was at least a five hour drive from Allepey and we decided to just go part way today, just cross the lake to the village of Kumaragam where there was a Taj hotel next to a bird sanctuary.

We chartered a tiny ferry boat to take us there. We had the small (12 person?) passenger compartment to ourselves, and lay down on the benches and napped to the rocking of the boat. But the rocking got stronger. The wind picked up and water started splashing through the open windows. Sher had never been on a tiny boat on rough water before, and while at first it was great fun, he began to feel sea-sick. At the same time, the skipper decided the seas were really too rough and informed us that he could not get us to the Taj. We were close -- we could see it maybe 3 miles off -- but the winds were too strong. We turned into the shore and found a quiet canal. Motoring through thick watercress, we came to the middle of Kumaragam where we caught a rickshaw to the Taj.

Sher bargained a special rate for us: 7000 Rs ($155) for two nights, all food included. Though we had originally intended only one night, we changed our minds easily. And why not? It was a beautiful hotel: an old British residence converted into a hotel a few years back, fronting a football field sized pond, sheltered in tall trees from the lake, right next to the bird sanctuary. A few of the trees over the hotel were full of stork nests and exotic birds fished in the pond just outside our cottage window. We swam in the pool (my only complaint about Taj pools is that they are closed from 7pm to 7am: absurd when they are so warm and pleasant at night) and ate by candlelight on the lawn. The hotel had extremely tippy kayaks -- Sher managed to do 2 small circuits before giving up -- with very strange metal seats that completely cut off circulation to one of my legs. I got out and walked 10 steps before my leg quit completely and I collapsed next to 4 Indians eating their dinner. I smiled and explained the problem in English but I don't know that they understood. Two minutes later, my leg recovered and I stood up and walked off as if nothing happened. It felt very strange to be a public cripple one minute and fine the next.

The next morning I got to ride the Taj's own elephant for two hours along the area's single road. Two families came out with coconuts, which the elephant gently stepped on -- Craaack! -- and then happily ate the white meat. It was quite hot again, and the elephant waved his trunk longingly at the pools of water just off the road. But the mahout kept him going until we came to a water faucet. The elephant curled his trunk into a "J" under the faucet and the water poured and poured and poured into the trunk, essentially pouring UP into the trunk. It took about 15 seconds to fill, and then the elephant would lift the end into his mouth and "Splooosh!" he'd spray the trunkful down his throat. Over and over again, for 10 minutes! Thirsty elephant! Then it started raining, but none of us minded (mahout, me or the elephant), because it felt so good in the heat.

The second morning Sher and I hiked into the bird sanctuary at dawn (the best time they said). It was so humid at 6:30am our shirts were soaked almost immediately. A snake slithered off the trail as we entered the jungle. And it was a jungle: vines on the trees like southern kudzu, but of more variety and profusion. Tall tall trees. Nice. There was no real good view of the sanctuary, but a couple of breaks in the underbrush let us see dozens of trees festooned with silhouetted birds. Flocks swooped through the morning air. Mostly one kind of seabird, like a black stork, though there were a few white herons and other birds too. It was a fine place to visit if you were staying nearby, though I wouldn't say it was worth a trip to Kumaragam by itself.

Sher was not feeling well so we bullied our way onto a boat owned by the hotel on the other side of the sanctuary (the Taj didn't send boats in) and then had to make a show of wanting to see that hotel to justify our visit. We thought we could catch a rickshaw from that hotel to the Taj but there were no roads. We had to walk just as far.

Checking out we got a surprise: our special rate was not for all the food we could eat as we had thought but (logically) had a maximum. A rather low maximum given the prices (almost $2 for a cup of tea that is $.05 on the street): 2500 Rs. And we had rung up a 4000 Rs food bill. Ah well.

Sher found a taxi to take us to Periyar. 130 km, 4 hours: 1200 Rs ($26). If I had tried to book such a car from the States the price would have been at least triple that. We had considered taking a bus (no trains go closer to Periyar than Kottayam, 10 miles from Kumaragam), but I was glad we didn't: the road is all switchbacks and I had to move into the front seat to not get sick. It was a lovely journey otherwise: enormous fancy houses fronting large rubber plantations (all the rubber taps had little blue or clear plastic visors on them, maybe to keep rain out of the sap?), and then steep steep wild hillsides with just a few houses perched on stilts, a rickety version of California craziness. Tea bushes covered several hillsides, a smooth green carpet broken only by wandering narrow walkways. A brand new church commanded one of the ridges. Almost gothic in style from the outside, inside it was disappointing: no pews, no stained glass, crumbling plaster. The single parishioner present just wanted to talk about the sin of abortion.

There are only three hotels inside Periyar, all run and owned by the government. One is an old hunting lodge, accessible only by boat, and 6000 Rs ($133) plus 25% tax. We looked at the 3 star place instead, but it was dismal. Dark and dank and you had to keep the windows closed or the monkeys would come in. 2500 Rs when it should have been more like 1000. We went and looked at the one star hotel, which was actually nicer (more air at least) but a sign on wall said that guests were not allowed off the premises after 6 pm. What? Periyar Park is only open from 6am - 6 pm. Even if you stay inside the park, you cannot GO inside the park at night. Even during the DAY you can only go off the main road with a government approved guide. (Violators will be prosecuted. Having seen the hotels, I didn't want to imagine what the prisons would be like!) So what was the point in staying in the park? Hell with that, we went back into the town just beyond the park entrance and found a marvelous (private!) hotel called Spice Village. A little "village" of elephant grass roofed cottages scattered on a hillside planted with Kerala's famous spices -- vanilla, pepper, you name it, coffee, all sorts of wonderfully smelling trees and bushes -- it was only 2700 Rs/day including all the food you could eat. And what a feast they put out for each meal! Like a wedding feast, a 35' counter covered in food....yummm. The deserts were very funny: there was always one souffle, one bread pudding, and usually one jello, and then a local desert. Once it was our favorite, a noodle version of rice pudding with cinnamon and cardomom. (Coincidentally, this hotel was owned by the same company who owned the one we had barged into that morning.)

The main way to see Periyar was by boat, and the hotel staff said the evening cruise was the best, so we went trekking in the morning. Lonely Planet says full day treks are $250/person. If you go directly to the trekking hut the price is 30 Rs ($.75) for 1 or 2 hours. We booked through the hotel: 125 Rs each. The hotel provided special anti-leech socks into which we tucked our pants. We'd stop every 5-10 minutes and brush off the leeches. Tiny tiny ones, mostly, like little inchworms. A few were bigger, but none more than an inch and a half. They made Sher pretty nervous. Our guide took us entirely off trail, tromping through the woods, and pointing out various trees by their latin name. I always had to ask to get the English name. Rosewood. Sandlewood. Teak. Big big Banyan trees that he said were only 100 years old. Ok, things grow fast here, but THAT fast? Sher and I were dubious. Our guide called them Strangler trees, since they (often?) grow up around another tree, strangling it. And several trees whose names I couldn't catch or recognize. He pulled leaves off various bushes so we could smell the spices, and dug up some turmeric (an orange root). We saw two big bees' nests. Got a glimpse of a cobra. 2 glimpses of sambar (big) deer. I got excited when I thought I saw some gaur (BIG black Indian bison), but they were just domesticated water buffalo. We walked along a path frequented by some of the park's 900 wild elephants, but saw only their dung and footprints. The guide showed us some claw marks in a tree that he said was a tiger marking its territory. The best thing was really the fact that we were walking in a jungle with huge huge trees and a CHANCE of seeing some exotic animal. Even not seeing them was ok: it was so nice to be hiking through wilderness.

We took the boat cruise that night. What a joke. Like the hotels, the boats are owned and run by the government. It took Sher 30 minutes to buy the ticket because they had no change (for 100 Rs? Give me a break!). At 4pm the boats converged on the jetty, each one more of a rust-bucket than the last. Peeling paint, bilge pump spewing water one direction, diesel fumes belching the other, I couldn't believe we were PAYING for the privelege of a ride on one of these death traps. Amusingly, the tickets were $2 for the upper deck and $1 for the lower. But only one boat had an upper deck and as it started to rain, no one stayed on it long anyway.

Our boat had a single deck with a wooden roof. The roof leaked, great big drops, and the sides were entirely open, and the rain was coming down at an angle. Unlike in Kottayam, it was cold here. The rain was beautiful, misty and all, but it was COLD! And I was still wearing summer clothes. Still, I wouldn't have noticed if we'd seen any wildlife. We did, actually, one more deer and I THINK off in the distance, some gaur, but the boat went AWAY from the bison! Twice!! What the @#%#??!! So we saw beautiful hilly jungle and grasslands, and one tiny orange cat -- housecat sized, but .... I don't know what it was. We didn't stop or even slow down. (We talked to a woman who went on the morning cruise and saw lots of wildlife, elephants, bison, deer, etc, but she said the boat sped away from the animals then too. Crazy.)

We couldn't decide if we wanted to stay a third night in Periyar or not, but on the second morning when it was raining again and the elephant available for riding was unavailable (because it was raining, no, because it was sick, no, because it was booked solidly -- the story kept changing) we decided to go. It was very foggy much of the ride down, and I had to lie down so as not to get sick from the curves. The taxi dropped us in Kottayam and we caught a train to Kochi. It was a short beautiful train ride through more paddies and palm trees for 11 Rs -- $.24! It was just dusk when we arrived in Kochin. I knew where we had to stay: the Bolgatty Palace, a "deluxe island heritage hotel set amidst the lush tropical greenery of Bolgatty Island off Kochi, this 17th century Dutch heritage-turned British Residency-turned hotel offers world class facilities" with "6 independant honeymoon cottages" , horseback riding, etc.... the picture in the brochure looked great, and Lonely Planet agreed. So we took the 1 Rs (for 2!) ferry to Bolgatty Island (the ferry was funny: it had a floating dock attached to it, balanced on 3 large canoes, to hold livestock and vehicles). Bolgatty Island is small: no roads, no vehicles. Just muddy tracks. We carried our bags the five minute walk to the hotel.

We were starting to get a bad feeling about this. There were no lights and it was dark now: we could barely see to avoid the puddles. Was the hotel even open? Just as we were sure it wasn't, we came to a gate with many attendants. They welcomed us and took our luggage. And we set off across the property. Still no lights, and now it was raining, but we were sweating so it felt good. The palace was dark. It was being renovated. (The Lonely Planet said it had been extensively renovated. Obviously the tense was wrong.) It would open in December they said. But the cottages were available. They were very amusing round treehouse affairs with round beds filling half the tiny space. Unfortunately, they smelled bad and had no screens in the windows. They had a fabulous view under spreading tree branches to Kochi, but boats were putting by and ... the outdoor lights didn't work ... and there were no other guests. Just a dozen or more workers hanging out in the reception area / restaurant. It felt creepy, like the Adams Family Hotel or something. And they wanted 1500 Rs! Ok, they offered a 25% discount. But ... no. There was no other restaurant, nothing to do, nothing else on the island.... We decided to take a pass. Could they give us a lift to the Taj, across the water? Nope. They'd take us back to the shore we'd come from for 50Rs. We opted to carry our bags back through the rain and mud to the public ferry.

Ferries to the Taj were every 45 minutes and we really weren't up to it. There was another Taj on this shore, but we didn't really want to spend the money. We asked the rickshaw to take us to a good hotel and he took us to Kochi's business hotel, the Abad Plaza, a Great Western hotel. Six floors of almost identical rooms, it was like a typical American hotel, trying to be a bit fancy with a pool on the roof (and a marble but unheated jacuzzi) and a health club, but the paint in the rooms was stained, the carpets worn, the walls very thin (sigh), and the whole place smelled weird -- though not as strongly as the Government places in Periyar! We decided not to be picky. (Well, we looked at 5 rooms before we found one that was ok, but we were too tired to go looking at other hotels.)

The next day, there were really only two things I wanted to see in Kochi, the Palace and a famous Synagogue (which Salmon Rushdie wrote about in "The Moor's Last Sigh" which I recently read), both in the historic Fort Kochin, across the water. But first we needed to figure out our tickets home: we didn't have any yet. There were two daily flights to Bangalore. Jet Airways (private and safer) at 8 am. Very tricky to catch if we switched hotels to the Taj or something nearer Fort Kochin, since the airport would be a boat and a long taxi ride away. Or Indian Airlines (Government again, not a good safety record) at 3pm. IA's computers were down so they couldn't tell us about availability. Sher wanted to go to the airport and wing it. I kinda wanted to see Kochin, but it was very hot already and ... ah the hell with it. The man at the hotel said the flight was waitlisted so we probably wouldn't get on, but (after watching most of the medal bouts for women's fencing -- the first time I've ever seen Olympic fencing!) ... we went anyway. Through busy Kochi -- ugh, another crowded polluted modern (for India) city to the spanking new airport 30 Km away in the lovely green countryside.

There was plenty of room on the plane. Indian airlines give lunch, even on a 55 minute flight (the food is even pretty tasty) so the trip went very fast. The taxi drivers in Bangalore wanted 80 Rs (nearly $2) to take us home and we laughed in their faces. The rickshaw wanted 50 Rs, but we made him use his meter, which came to 20 Rs. He wanted 10 Rs extra for waiting at the airport for our flight. (He pretended it was late, though it wasn't; you'd think he'd realize we'd know that.) We gave him the extra 10. Sheesh. Funny how we bargain and fret over a few rupees when we squander thousands at the Taj, but ... you want value for your money. And Sher and I both dislike paying 2 or 3 times the real rate for something.

So we're back, and the air here is just as bad as when we left. I'm sneezing up a storm. No marble cutting -- so far! -- but there's a new devilry next door: diesel belching tractors made to pull much more than they can, so they spin their wheels in the soft dirt and go nowhere while the workers put sticks under the WRONG wheels (the trailer wheels, instead of the tractor's!) and finally have to dump the whole trailer load to get it out of its ruts. Sigh....

We're already trying to decide where and when our next escape will be: more Kerala? Goa? Sri Lanka? Nepal?? Stay tuned.

Maya & Sher

More Kerala Pictures This Earth            


All photographs copyright Maya Wallach, AliaTerra