Growing a Beard

This post is about my dear friend Jan who runs the site eXtreme-backgammon.net. It’s basically pictures of people playing backgammon under extreme circumstances. Be it on a deserted island, at the top of Mont Blanc in Italy or simply with a holy cow. So how does this relate to India you may ask!? Well, he went to India before me and has been travelling around the country and seen a lot more than I did. Also, one of his best friends is travelling in India at the moment and he keeps us updated with fresh photos and stories. Thank you Udo!

Luckily for us, they never forget their board or camera and all these posts with people playing backgammon eXtreme can be found here: India.

Even I had the chance for a guest play last summer when we travelled to Italy and Jonas managed to keep the leaning tower of Pisa erected while throwing the dices!

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We arrived in Alappuzha (Allepy) from Munnar by car around 5 in the afternoon. The town is the largest entry gate to the famous Keralan backwaters and most tourists usually come here to jump on a houseboat or any other of the many boat trips available. I heard somewhere that some call the town “Venice of India”. There are definitely canals just like in Venice, but that’s probably the only similarity between the two cities!

The driver dropped us of next to one of the canals where the houseboats are parked and waiting to find costumers. As fast as we got of the car we were surrounded by people trying to sell us a trip on one of the hundreds of houseboats. I managed to ignore the touts trying to catch my attention and went directly to the boat owners who mostly sat in their boats and chilling. The first houseboat we saw was a double-decker with two double bedrooms, each with own bathroom. The price he offered was 4500 rupees for two nights, including all meals. This was far cheaper than what I had expected and I didn’t find any other boat for the same price while looking around. They were usually not a double decked and the price was usually 1000 rupees more for the two nights. I made the deal with the boat owner who jumped on his bike to go shopping groceries for our meals and we went to buy some beer and snacks for the trip. We left Allepy at seven on a boat full of food and drinks heading off to the lake where we would park for the night.

Sunset over the backwaters, Kerala

More info about the houseboats here: Houseboat on Wikipedia.org/

The crew consisted of an older steer man, a chef and the brother of the owner who also baked bread and helped in the kitchen. The chef cooked at least 4 different dishes for each meal, not to mention the fresh baked chapatti and rice and other side dishes. I can without a doubt admit that the food on the boat was by far the best food I had in India. Fresh coconut is used largely in the Keralan kitchen and there was no short of it in our food. Our chef also made a couple of dishes with sugar beets which tasted heavenly. We stopped by a fish monger along on of the canals the day after and got fresh fish as well as king prawns which we later barbequed for lunch. We were also served snacks and fresh fruit between the meals.

Lunch on houseboat, Kerala

There is not much to do along the canals than to relax and watch people going on with their everyday lives; bathing and washing cloths in the water, school children hoping on the boat home after classes are finished etc. We came back to Allepy early in the morning on our second morning on the boat and jumped on a taxi which took us further south to the heavenly beaches of Varkala.

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We left Fort Cochin early in the morning by car, heading towards Munnar to spend one night in the tea country. The trip to Munnar was pretty pleasant with lovely scenery consisting of rice fields, banana and coffee plantations and of course palm trees everywhere. We spotted also many natural rubber plantations as well as cocoa, cardamom and pineapple plants. We arrived in Munnar in early afternoon and the first thing we noticed was the difference in temperature from the rest of Kerala. The weather here was much cooler then what I was used to in India, which was nice since I didn’t have to constantly sweat for a while. There are tea plantations pretty much everywhere you look and pretty much everyone who live in the area work on the plantations. Almost all plantations are owned by the large TATA Corporation which produces everything from cars to phones, and tea of course.

Tea plants everywhere, Munnar

We stayed at Olive Brook Hotel which is located on the hills outside the town and is a slightly more expensive option. It’s surrounded by cardamom and coffee plantations in a very quite area. Included in the room tariff of 63-88 USD is breakfast and dinner. They also demonstrate how they cook the dinner (they like to call it “cookery class” which is kinda pushing it) and the food was generally very good and came in loads. Since Olive Brook is small in size, the service is very personal and friendly and I think it was worth the price. They also take you for a trek to the surrounding plantations but one needs a driver to go to Munnar town. There is not much to see in Munnar, except for all the tea, but I recommend it for people with a loose time schedule. I was initially thinking about skipping Munnar due to the time it takes to get there and back to the west Kerala, but I’m glad to have seen it. There is unfortunately not much to see and do between the tea country and the western Kerala where most tourists spend their time. I did however spoke to some people who were heading to the Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary which is further east.

Olive Brook Hotel, Munnar, India

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Arriving in Kerala, it was very easy to see the differences between the other places I’ve been to in India. From the plane window we could see all the green everywhere and lots of water. The weather was much hotter than Hyderabad and much more humid. Another nice surprise was all the palm trees everywhere which made us feel like we had landed in a tropical place.

I flew in to Cochin with Air Sahara and paid 4300 (80€) rupees for a round trip. Our flight was a couple of hours late so we missed the whole day in Cochin. The taxi trip from the airport to Fort Cochin, where we were staying, around 600 rupees and it took us around 2 hrs to get to our hotel.

It took us two hours to arrive to our hotel, Ann’s Residency, in Fort Cochin and we were very happy to see how cool and laid back the town was. There were far less people than any other place we had visited in India and the mix of palm trees, sound of the sea and the hot tropical air made me feel like I was finally on vacation. After a short walk in town, we had dinner at the Old Courtyard where there was live music for the evening. The place is very cosy with a great atmosphere and service and of course tasty, but not very remarkable food. The power went out during the dinner and the place went pitch black. It took a couple of minutes before the garden was lit up with candles and the place looked even nicer than it did with the power on. Our hotel was a homestay and good value for the price (1500 rupees for non air conditioned room). The owner however was very keen to send us to another hotel in Munnar than the one we had already booked, when he heard we were heading that way and wouldn’t stop propagating for it even though we said we weren’t interested; he kept saying “Ok, it’s your choice, BUT…” over and over again and got very annoying after a short while.

Chinese fishing nets and fishing boats in Fort Cochin

We started the next day with breakfast in the highly recommended Kashi Art Café and spent the rest of the day walking around town and stopping to cool down from the extreme heat. We stopped by the Solar Café which is in the same building as the Draavidia Art Gallery. We had some fresh lime soda with ginger, one of my favourite drinks in India beside sweet lime juice, and fresh fruit before we went to the Chinese fishing nets for seafood lunch. There are a couple of fishmongers just behind the nets where we could buy fresh fish and have it cooked for 60 rupees at one of the many shacks along the seafront. The shacks don’t have a license to serve alcohol so they’ll bring your beer in a teapot and we had to drink it out of tea cups, which actually adds to the experience. We had dinner at the History Restaurant inside the Brunton Boatyard. The place is very fancy and hence pricy and we didn’t see any Indian people eating there. There was however live music and the food and the service was fine, but I wouldn’t recommend it to anyone. But if you want to meet loads of rich foreigners and pay too much for food and drink, this is the place for it in Fort Cochin.

Fishmongers in Fort Cochin

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Tonite on my way from work I was speaking with Ismail, who is THE man and knows literally everything from the flight nbr for the incoming Indian Air flight from Mumbai to the personal phone nbr of the city commissioner etc. Conveniently I brought up the subject of my visa expiring 8 days before my actual departure. He turned to me from the front passenger seat with a look which said more than enough. Short summary, I’m in big trouble. Long story, my visa is not valid for my entire stay and expires 8 days before my departure, Dec 3. I was told in Dublin that I can easily extend it after my arrival here in India but according to Ismail, this is pretty much impossible and I won’t receive it on time for my departure and if I do, it will cost me hundreds of dollars. Anyways, he will call the commissioner tomorrow to see if they can sort something out, and I just send an e-mail to the embassy back in Dublin crying for help.
Enough of random stories…

Since many of you have been asking me this pretty much every time we speak, I would like to go ahead and make an official statement; I’m now finally officially food-poisoned, are you happy now?! For the first time in my life, and it happened at the Mumbai’s best restaurant Indigo. I guess they gave the good piece of grilled fish to Brad Pitt and Angelina Jolie, who were among the list of guests this fishy evening. The rest of the crowd was by the way a mix of filthy-rich citizens, maybe not-so-rich but white westerners as well as ladies in hot pants (inappropriate in public anywhere really!) and fanatical cleavages.
To be honest, we didn’t “technically” see Brangolina (I prefer Pittolina), but they must have seen us (!!) since we sat right next to the entrance and were not expecting such an extraordinary visit. On our way out from Indigo the paparazzis asked us if we saw what Brangolina had ordered etc etc, and we went: “WHA-WHAT-WHO!?!?!”. Yes, we didn’t even know they were there…
I know you would rather read about my health than what Angelina was wearing, and I can inform you that according to the doctor I will be fixed in 3-5 days, Indian time. And Paula, I know how much you want it, but Brad and wife wont be able to join us for our trip, sorry to disappoint you!

Zoroastrian temple in Mumbai

I found Mumbai to be very metropolitan and clean with many old buildings and fine architecture and had a great time when I was still well. We arrived on Friday night and got to the hotel after midnight. Hotel City Palace is recommended in the Lonely Planet and was the only place with available rooms from the list of 15 hotels in the book. We paid 1650 rupees for a dbl room each with balcony and an excellent view of the Victoria Terminus station. The room itself was quite cramped and smelled of smoke; it did however the job and we didn’t really have much of choice.
We spend the Saturday walking around the city in the hot-hot-heat visiting many of the famous spots, least inspiring being the Gateway of India and most memorable the colourful Colaba Market and afternoon beer at the legendary Leopold Café & Bar which dates back to 1871. We went to Chowpatty Beach to see the sunset which was quite an amazing view and the beach came to life after dark with people enjoying the cool air blowing in from the Arabian Sea. We left the beach heading for Indigo for dinner, and you know the rest!

Sunday was a painful day, woke up with a feeling that somebody had punched me in the stomach, REAL hard. Didn’t leave the hotel till noon when we checked out and went for breakfast to Café Churchill. When we got in I spotted a guy with a green Irish rugby shirt and we sat next to him and started chatting. Shayne from Limerick has been travelling around the world for a whole year and India is his last stop before heading back to Ireland to celebrate x-mas. Later on we went together to Mani Bhavan, the building where Mahatma Gandhi stayed during 1917-1934 which was truly a moving experience. After that we headed to Mumbai’s Dhobi Ghat, where clothes are washed. Here, thousands of men wash thousands of kilos of dirty clothes brought from all over the city every day and I must say it was an original photo motif. We went on to the airport later where the taxi driver, just like any other in Mumbai, demanded the triple fare for the trip, which is otherwise CLEARLY visible on the outdated meter (the fare shown has to be multiplied by 13!). This did indeed call for Hessam’s dark sides, at that moment pitch black due to the added effect of food-poisoning, to come forward for a last row.
Five hours later we finally arrived at the hotel and I could finally relax and feel slightly at home.

Riding a cab in Colaba

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