South Indiah: Cochin, Gokarna & Goa
I can't quite believe I'm in back in India, and in Kerala again. I'm searching through some emails , looking for my train , and the search reveals emails between my friend, Clair, in which we are hooking up for the start of the Cochin- Darjeeling TucTuc ralley in 2006. A group of crazy (!!) Brits each put together £2-3000 per team, to buy brand new TucTucs, which they ten raced across India, starting in cochin across the country to the mountainous, tea growing area: Darjeeling, still on my India bucket list. The race took some 3 weeks, with many breakdowns and adventures along the way: such as sleeping beside the road, and relying on the hospitality on India to feed them , or give them shelter. They then donated the TucTuc to the Indian TuTuc drivers association so that they could disburse them to the most needy. A TucTuc can bring a cash income for a struggling family.
This time I see businesses: cafes, restaurants, hotels closed due to the lack of tourism, due to stringent COVID lockdown in Kerala. Everyone is masked on the streets. Everyone is friendly and waves "hello" at the foreigner/tourist.
My hotel owner: Zen Boutique hotel is a lovely Tibetan lady called Renzin, and over the course of the next 5 mornings or so, she tells me of the struggle of hotel owners, with guests booking her hotel, and then having to cancel because their flight is cancelled. Overland tourism is possible! Well, it would be if the Indian government weren't so strict about counting tourists in and out of the country, by the airlines. Over the next few days she tells me about being a Tibetan exiled, for life, in India. The most shocking thing I discover, is that despite being born in Orissa state, Tibetans born in India do not have a passport. So when she wants to travel, to say, Thailand, she has a yellow "travel permit" document. Border guards frown upon this, and ask "what is this?" . I have invited her to my home in Brighton, UK. Foreign travel is out of reach for most Indians, not having a strong currency. Even Dubai, which was expensive for me, is out of reach, except those Keralans that get work there. More on this later.
After a couple of hours sleep in my beautiful Zen room, still tired, I head out and wander through Fort Kochin. I eventually find the ferry to Ernakulum, one of my favourite ways to travel, for just ₹6, 6 pence. I wander the narrow streets, ducking electrical cables, unfinished pavements. I find a lovely book shop, but oh, it is so hot, I can barely concentrate. Eventually , I find Marine Drive, and the tech & telecom shops. I enter one, and ask about Vodafone, which is called "Vi" now here. The head office is 2km away in away in a rickshaw. I go to another, and stay mostly due to the fact that it's cool, and air conditioned (!!) He actually sells mobile phones (more profitable, I assume!) calls his guy at the Airtel mobile phone shop to come over to help this foreigner/tourist get an Indian SIm & data. He's a really cool young guy with the requisite snappy hair . I only have a pic of my passport, and the transaction to register the SIM doesn't go through. The shop owner says I should come back tomorrow with my actual passport. I leave. I get the ferry back to Fort cochin, and stop in a bar/restaurant which serves beer (a rare find in nearly dry Kerala) where I eat veg stewed in coconut, served with spicy pickles. Yum!
I give my thanks and say goodbye, hungry and thirsty. On the way back to the ferry, I find a south Indian favourite, and old, shabby, dark: India Coffee house, where the waiters still wear a turban. I order lime soda, and a Masala dosa, the wafer thin rice pancake filled with a tastry, spiced mash potato. My phone rings, and it is the sad news that our beloved cat, Stevie 2 1/2 cat years has been run down by a car on the busy road near our house. I am unspeakably sad. I message my son to let him know. The waiters ask me if there is something wrong with my food.
I get the ferry back to Fort Kochin. I sleep well. I make friends with the young people in the house opposite: we talk about literature, religion, yoga. They have cats which come and sleep on their roof.
The next day, after breakfast of Roti and cucumber and tomato Raita, I decide to try and get to Alleppey, to go ona backwater boat trip, as none are running from Cochin, due to Covid-19. I set off at 11 am, thinking/hoping I'll take in the sunset... I try the RoRo ferry, but the guy tells me the passenger ferry is better. From Ernakulum, I stupidly(?) try to walk to Ernakulum Junction station. I see the smart new Metro station, and go in and ask for a ticket to "Alleppey". She sells me a ticket for ₹40 (€4) to somewhere called "Edalleppey". I climb the stairs to the platform, where luckily the platform guard tells me the Metro goes to the airport. I go back downstairs, and demand my ₹40. She doesn't want to refund my ticket, saying as I've gone through the barriers, I've "used" my ticket. I have to get quite assertive: I'm still here, aren't I?
I jump in a TucTuc, and reach Ernakulum junction 200M down the road. at the ticket office, she says I should buy a ticket tat the information desk. I go through security. At the Information desk, they tells me as I've missed to close of ticket sales for the train (Why don't they just say the train is full?), but I can pay a fine of ₹300 to get on the train illegally. Really? Wtf? I leave the station and ask for directions to the bus station. I find the Kerala Sate bus to Alleppey, but at 1pm, I don't fancy a two-hour journey to Alleppey and back, so I leave and go and find some lunch instead. If in doubt, eat lunch. I find a lovely hotel, with an air con restaurant, sadly not a roof terrace. There is not much social distancing going on at the self service buffet. I eat my new favourite: Mutter Paneer, made from milk curds, so not Vegan, but an Indian substitute for tofu, washed down with an imported beer. I spend a nice couple of hours enjoying the view over Cochin, now called Kochi.
On Sunday , I tried to find an Icelandic-owned hotel called Secret Garden, which has Vegan food and a swimming pool. Sadly, due to the lack of tourism, lack of International flights they were closed. I ate a delicious vegetable thali at the Cultural coconut cafe, and got talking to a travel agent at the lack of tourists. Sadly they didn't have any fresh coconuts, nor any delicious Vegan coconut yoghurt or ice-cream. Yet.
On my last days in Kochi, I indulge in a little spot jewellery shopping. In Fort Kochi, in the tourist street , I discover a lovely little Kashmiri Jewellery shop called Aura, in Princess street. On Sunday I meet an engineer from Russia, with very little English, on some top-secret government project between Russia and India, which has to be military communications, given the amount of army, navy, and customs in Port Cochin. I meet hilarious Marseille resident Nicholas and his sister who is shopping for a gorgeous Emerald necklace of 715 carats which comes out at a whopping €1900! I leave them to negocios.
I return to my hotel, get changed into my travelling gear of black leggings and black T-shirt dress for my first real India train experience. I say my goodbyes to Renzin and family, and get a taxi to Ernakulam junction station. Again. My travel agent, 12GoAsia were not able to secure me a sleeper on this overnight train to Gokarna. I calculate that if there are 6 sleeper carriages, each with 72 sleeper berths there must be one sleeper berth free.
I wait in carriage 6, until the kindly guard arrives. I explain my predicament. He comes back after half an hour or so, and leads me to carriage 3. The doors on the train are open. I hope I don't fall out.
I take my middle berth, and order a biryani through the window. At another stop the cool guys (non-staring) get me a chai from the platform. Meanwhile my girlfriends are enjoying their slap up Christmas meal at Côte in London.
I doze off to sleep, but wake up at a long(er) stop at Mangalore at 2am. I make a video of us departing the station. I set my alarm for 6 am , and put my walking boots, and pack on and depart the train at Gokarna Road at 6:30 am. I find a TucTuc driver to take me to my "hotel", Siva Ganga cafe, a beach shack for the next ten days or so for ₹400. He tries to pull the stunt on me dropping me at "Ganga" cafe, but firmly I insist that I said "Shiva ganga" cafe. My GPS shows me we are a few km away from my destination. It was worthwhile waiting three hours in a mobile phone shop for data for moments like this.
He drops me at the end of the lane, and I make my way across the narrow path across the paddy field to Siva Ganga beach cafe for the next ten days of my life. I drop my pack, and walk out onto the wide golden sands, for my first paddle in the gorgeous Arabian sea. My room is just a block room, with a wooden bed, and not much else. I enjoy black tea and an Israeli breakfast (no hummus, as there are no Israelis here at the moment) of shakshuka (no eggs) and a fresh vegetable salad. I take myself off to a hammock between two coconut palms, where I nearly fall asleep. So I take myself to my room, and fall asleep, liberally sprinkling the bed with the lavender oil I always carry on my travels. I wake up and walk down the length of the beach to Gokarna City, which is a hub for Hindu pilgrims, devotees of Shiva (Siva) . I do not enter the temple as I am dressed in teeny tiny shorts. I try the cash machine of State Bank of India (SBI), but it is not able to make the conversion from £. A kindly Russian on a big bike transports me on the back of his motorbike to the nearby branch of Karnataka bank. Here they are filling up the ATM with notes, and they tell me to wait ten minutes. Everyone else can get cash out. SO I walk back to the SBI and get a wad of ₹200 notes (about €40) on my Credit card. The next day I walk back into town, and spend some of my stash on a beautiful Ganesha (elephant god) notebook, a French book called Le Dent du Budha (tooth of buddha), a T-shirt printed with Om ॐ (the universal sound of meditation), and a lovely white top with hand crocheted trim.
After a breakfast of fresh vegetable salad and a roti prepared by chef, I set off walking north towards what I think is Om beach, and end up at the tip of the peninsula that we are on. The road bridge across the estuary is not yet completed. Looking for a cafe or restaurant for lunch, I end up at a lovely little roadside shop where I get soda water, peanuts, spicy tomato puffs, like Wotsits for lunch. I walk back through the paddy fields with buffalos grazing. I think I am falling in love with Gokarna. It is idyllic. The local bus picks me up, and gives me a lift most of the way back. I cross paddy fields , past a school where the teacher and children are doing a beautiful call and response. I walk back down Gokarna beach, and have a delightful, cooling swim in the Arabian sea, until my fingers go wrinkly. So here I am sitting in Siva Ganga cafe , listening to the latest India dance tunes, veg noodles for supper, and quite a busy night for the cafe with at least 5 tables of Indian customers, and one young man, alone, getting so drunk on his birthday, we have to carry him to his hut, and put him to sleep in the recovery position. His amma keeps calling him. Yogi from the cafe has to assure her that we will look after him.
So my days in Gokarna pan out thus: breakfast of fresh vegetable salad, or my new favourite: aloo paratha with lime pickle and a black coffee. Then a spot of reading my French police novel, set in sleepy, communist Laos, and very readable for me. I am also sketching the 12 asanas I will learn at Sivananda, the 5 points of yoga: 1) Asanas 2) Breathing: Pranayama 3) Proper diet (vegetarian!) 4) Positive thinking and 5) Proper relaxation. After breakfast and reading/study, I set off each day to find a site to sketch: so one day I visit Shiva cave, where Shiva devotees could mediate in the cool. I try and eat in Zostel which has a beautiful terrace overlooking the length of Gokarna beach. It's late , and chef has finished his shift, always a sure sign of a decent restaurant. I eat tat the very forgettable cafe next door, which also has a pretty good view of the kilometers of unspoilt beach.
The next day I set off on the long trek to the next beach called Kuddli beach. It's more of an arc of a beach, and packed with weekend trippers who are trying jet-skiing, banana boats, canoeing. The cafe my friend has recommended has been taken over by new management , and when I ask if they are open for food : to eat? He replies "elephant?" !! I walk away, and eat next door at a restaurant called Hanuman, the monkey good. It's run by Hanu one of the staff of Shiva cafe next door, and he cooks me the most delicious Cauliflower Manchurian, which tastes like chicken. Who needs meat? I spend a pleasant afternoon sketching Cuddli beach, and walk all the way home to my Shiva Ganga beach, at the top end of the Gokarna beach. I am shattered, but revived with black tea when I get home.
The next day is Sunday, the day of rest so I don't venture far , just to Bhagwan cafe, next door , and over a rickety bridge over the stream. I spend a pleasant few hours sketching the scene, complete with herons, waiting for my friend, Helene and her gorgeous baby, Luca. They are out. I eat a Humous wrap with spicy desiccated aubergines, Israeli food. Yum. I thought it was going to be a substantial baked aubergine dish for Sunday lunch. When they are not back by 4pm, I go for my daily swim in the Arabian ocean. I go beyond the big waves, and suddenly I feel a sting on my arm - I've been bitten by a jellyfish! I swim back to shore, and the guys at shiva Ganga call for medicinal vinegar from the kitchen. Luckily I have some ammonia for bites and stings too. I cool off in the shower , and after half an hour the burning of a hundred nettle stings is waring off. I see my friends on the beach, and take them a papaya that my laundry lady has given me. Even though it's not perfectly ripe, its delicious and Luca loves it. Between every bite he has to go to the shoreline to wash his hands. Like a seal, he must have so much sand in his tummy! To cap off a beautiful day, we see a dolphin jumping through the waves, at sunset.
I spend the next evening trying to connect to the various NFT payment methods India has: PhonePe (!! pronounced PhonePay) and PayTM. However, as well as an India mobile , they require an Indian bank account, which I don't have, and am not going to get on a 1m tourist visa. Which means I will have to spend the next days going back and forth to the one ATM: Canara bank to get the cash I need to pay the room bill and restaurant bill. I try SBI (State bank of India) but its comms are so slow, it can't connect, and make the currency conversion, so I head back to Canara bank, and get out what I need, on that day. The bank staff are going on strike in the next days, to protest Privatisation of banks. Everything in india is being sold off, privatised. I head back to Shiva Ganga, and pay my room bill. My restaurant bill adds up to about Euro4 per day. Bargain.
On my penultimate day, I eat lunch and then head to the bathing ghats in the centre of Gokarna to sketch them. I wanted to get two sides of the square in, but only manage to sketch one side of the orange and cream striped bathing ghats. There's some kind of Hindu puja going on next door to me, a young lady lays flowers to assuage the gods of whatever she's praying for. The chanting continues on and on, periodically bolstered by new arrivals. I realise what a con all organised religions are, especially as Hinduism has been weaponised my Narinder Mohdi's BJP party to win power in India, by dividing Hindus and muslims.
In my last days I befriend a lovely couple , Berndt Peter, originally German and his Indian wife Minash. He too, completed Shivananda Yoga teacher training, in 1990. And we spend a nice afternoon (Nachmittag) talking German and sharing experiences. As he married Minash, he gets something called an : OCI: Overseas Citizen of India card, which gives him permanent residency. Sadly they live near Palolem beach in South Goa, and I am headed to Arambol in North Goa.
I spend my last day doing nothing in particular, before my day of travel tomorrow. I still haven't managed to befriend the Russian(s) recluse living in the fishermen's hut, next to my beach hut, despite having donated him the last of my Lentils from Carrefour in Dubai..I sit with the guys from Shiva GA nag cafe playing sacred tunes: Om Sivaya Hari Nahm on my last night. It's beautiful..
Next day , I'm up early doing yoga stretches, into my travel gear (black leggings, black t-Shirt) i eat a break fast of aloo paratha and a last vegetable salad, half of which i pack up as a picnic. They call me a TucTuc, and we say our goodbyes. I have to fight back tear, its so beautiful here. I am sad to leave. The TucTuc takes me to Gokarna road, a newish station , part of the Konkan express railway, which about twenty years old now, and all electrified. The train is at least half an hour late. I jump on, but can't proceed through to my allocated seat as the carriage is sealed so a Is it by a window seat. I get chai pretty quickly, and eat some of my paratha. The view is lush paddy with coconut trees, I even see two herons hitching a ride on the back of a cow. It only takes two hours to reach Mapusa , the busy Capital of southern Goa. I walk down the ramp, and jump in a Tuc Tuc to the bus station, where I pay ₹50 to jump on an electric, air con bus to Goa's capital, Panjim. How efficient , I think. Oh my, how Goa has changed. it's in the midst of a massive bridge and road building program. i don't see much of Panajii, as locals call it, as I jump on a local bus for ₹20 to whisk me to Mapusa, a dirty, noisy town in the North of Goa. I do see a lot of this bus station. I arrive at 3pm, and the next bus is standing room only, so I meet a lovely lady who says she's also waiting for the next bus. What a mistake. I use the bathroom. I get a delicious refreshing lime soda (salt, no sugar), and couple of samosas with green chilly sauce. We get on the bus around 4 pm. The bus fills up, and we set off ten minutes late around 4:30 pm. The bus conductor shouts at the farm workers who are carrying sacks of fertiliser back from market. We circle the local round about at least two times, trying to navigate into the petrol station to fill up. I ask the bus driver & conductor if they couldn't have done this before passengers got on. The local police man comes to investigate. The bus conductor is the rudest man, and the biggest bully I have ever encountered. He slings my backpack (with laptop) across the buss floor. I refuse to pay. HE shouts at me to get down. When i tell him I will not pay , he shouts at me "Shut up, shut up," over and over. An hour later, my skin burning from pollution and insect bites, we arrive at busy, congested Arambol bus stand. I jump down and report the bus conductor to the local police officer, who just laughs. The TucTuc doesn't know where AyM Yoga resort is, so I set off walking and call the resort for a pick up. i send my location. He tells me someone will call me. I am nearly at the yoga resort, when a moped comes back "offering room? room?" I arrive dustry, tired and and frazzled. Luckily Aym Yoga resort is a little Oasis in polluted Arambol.
After a shower i walk down to the bach, which just had a few shacks last time I visited in 2004. Now it's busier than Ibiza. I turn back from the beach, as I can't eat comfortably with drum and bass booming like that. I choose Little Chilly restaurant , which is run by a lovely husband and wife couple, and eat delicious Pav Bhaji, a tasty, spicy dhal served with two fried bread buns. This place becomes my local for the remainder of my stay. My Indian friend, Siddartha, whom I met in Split tries to call to check Im okay in India. We can't connect the call.
Next morning I wake at 7:15 for Satsang (morning chanting) but it turns out to be a Netti pot class, the process of cleaning out your throat and nostrils with saline water. Next is a nice Vinyasa flow yoga class with Ahmed. Turns out that 5 or 6 ladies are staying in the resort to complete 100H ITT (initial yoga teacher training). They try to get me to stay at AYM, but I'm set on my beloved, traditional Sivananda in an ashram, rather than in party, polluted Goa. Over the next days I have free classes with Parachi and Sharon, who are trainee teachers. Sharon, an Aussie who lives in Dubai becomes a good friend. I spend Christmas eve at a beach hut on the beach sketching the guest houses on the end of Arambol beach, reminiscing with the shack owner on how Arambol usd to be, a quite fishing village, with just a few sleepy shacks on the beach, where it took all afternoon, to get one fried fish. On Christmas eve evening , Sharon & I go shopping, and we buy beautifil block printed sarongs from Jaipur (Rajasthan), and she fall in love with a Pashmina, which she buys very serious young man from Kashmir. Oh, poor Kashmir, the subject of a war between Imperialist india and Pakistan. India even had the gall to turn off the Internet in Kashmir for 2 years, to prevent insurgents organising. Can you imagine? They just want their freedom. We even ended up at the local Catholic church, where to familiar hymns were being sung, in Hindi. Some of the outfits were amazing. I wish I could have photographed them. Many of the lower caste Hindus (Dalit, to give them their official name) have converted to either Islam or Christianity to get away from the scourge of being last in the pecking order for schools, housing, education in that religion. I return home around midnight. The dogs are feral, and I get a lift on an Royal Enfield from a friend.
On Christmas day I end up at Vailakanni resort for a breakfast of aloo paratha and black coffee in a lovely quiet garden. I chat with my cousin , Carmella who is raising her two daughters in Singapore, probably the only two of the Kelly tribe who are awake at that time.
On Sunday, Boxing day I walk around the cliffs at the top end of Arambol beach, past the cafes and numerous stalls selling clothing, jewellery, musical instruments and trinkets, and across the rocks to Sweet Lake beach. The sweet lake is actually a small polluted freshwater pond by the beach. There are more beach shacks going up, but unlike the main beach no-one here takes responsibility for collecting the trash that the Indian revellers throw: plastic water & pop bottles; glass bottles of beer and whiskey. I am hot so I take a dip in the Arabian sea. I don't stay in long, wary of jellyfish. I tickle a dog's tummy, and he comes to lie at my feet, wedging in me into my beach bed, so I decide to sketch him, my first dog. A lovely lady selling jewellery on the beach sits down with me, and we have a good laugh about how miserable the Russians are. They come here for months on end. They buy rice and oil from the local shops, and try to spend as little as possible, making their Roubles go as far as possible, so they can stay for 3M or 6M or more to get out of the harsh Russian winter. Who can blame them? I also get talking to a lovely group from Assam. Parachi is a mother of a 15month old baby, and has left her baby and husband behind, to visit Goa with her cousins for a New year break. On Sunday night I sneak out of AYM Yoga resort with Sharon for a beer at the local bar, called Red Monkey, run by an ebullient South African. She invites us to join in beer pong. we decline. The teacher trainers are following the Satvic diet: no coffee, no alcohol, no smoking, no sex for the one month period of their yoga course. Surprisingly sugar and dairy are allowed. It's easy to be vegetarian in India, but harder to be Vegan. I get it, Indian kids get a lot of their calcium form dairy and milk products. The curd or yoghurt is delicious and refreshing. It's served as a side to lots of dishes: muesli, paratha, lassi, fruit salads, raitha.
On Monday I am full of cold from my dip in the Arabian ocean at Sweet lake a, c from the polluted water. I have a lazy day. The matriarch of the family that run, AYM Yoga resort, Arambol, Sonia, has asked me to teach her 8 year daughter Sumiha English for the period 9 one week ) that I'm here. She has seen me using phonics to try to teach one of the boys that lives in the huts next to the resort. She wants a qualified English teacher like me, hard to find in Arambol/Goa. Sumiha and I start to read The Adventurous Tale of Alphonsous Tips by Michael Morpugo, which I picked up for free outside Red Monkey hostel, the local book store having failed to find a copy of Alice in Wonderland or Alice through the Looking glass. It's a great book, well written, and will help Sumiha with her vocabulary. Her little sister, Rangoli loves my pencil case and sketch book, so I have to sketch various fruits and animals. It's a great way to learn and aids concentration.
I go back to Vailkanni resort and sketch the the beautiful Rangoli which some artist has decorated the walls of the guest house with. And so I spend my last days a AYM yoga resort taking a yoga class in the am, hanging out with the girls, finding a subject and place to sketch by day, eating simple pav bhaji (spicy dhal with bread) at Little Chilly restaurant in the evening.
I practise Kundalini yoga with Ahmed on my last full morning I spend my last full day in Goa, the 30th December at a beach bar, sketching the local scenes: the fisher boats, the beach shacks...
So after a delicious breakfast of Mommos at Mama Mommo.s I say my goodbyes to the Yoginis and the family: Sonia, Mahesh, Sumiha and Ragni. I get a break of salad at the place opposite and boo a taxi to Thivim the train station.
So here I am in Mumbai...I made it - not without incident. I am alive, and on my way North to the Hindu Kingdom of Kathmandu. I will write again from there.
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Happy New Year! Blessings!
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