The day after thanksgiving, seina and I woke up before the sun was as out to catch our plane to Bangalore. As soon as we arrived in Bangalore we found the bus stand to take us to Mysore. When we checked into our very nice hotel, they provided us with neat little toiletry pouches with things like a toothbrush, comb, shampoo, and even bindis ( those dots women in India wear on their foreheads). Once settled we wandered out in search for the best south indian food Mysore had to offer. We were pleased to find out that our hotel was really close to the palace, but were kinda disappointed by the food we were directed to. However the next morning, we hired a rickshaw driver to take us to this game shop to pick up something for Seina's mom, but it wasn't open yet, so the driver took us to a nearby restaurant that was amazing! It had these fermented steamed rice cakes called idli that were like eating little clouds, and fried savory donuts called varas that were just as light and with a delicate thin fried crust. These are served with sambar, a soupy tomato dal, and coconut chutney. Even better, everything was served to usin our rickshaw, like an indian drive through! I am still craving these and would gladly go back to mysore just for these again.After the shop we went to the Mysore palace, a beautiful huge palace that resembles buckingham palace from the outside and on the inside is detailed with stained glass halls, elaborately carved doors, often inlayed with semi precious stones or ivory, and huge paintings. Sadly I was forbiddenforbidden from taking any pictures. We headed to a huge and colorful market called the devraj market, and then headed back to bangalore to catch a train to hampi
On the train to hampi we met a nice man from Spain who was thrilled to have someone to speak to in English. We actually got off the train in hospet and then took a local bus to hampi. Hampi is a city that holds the ruins of the great vijanagra empire. It is also thought to be kishkinda, the monkey kingdom in the indian epic "the Ramayana" where Rama meets Hanuman, themonkey god. I also happened to study some of the ruins in my indian art history class at Wesleyan, and so was really excited to see these sites I had written papers about in real life.
Hampi was amazing, even the bus ride in, as you get close these ruins that are thousands of years old just start to pop up all around among the huge boulders sitting in patches of greenery. Our first stop was the main temple. The outer courtyard was a gathering place for locals, having picnics among the ruins. Afterwards Seina and I rented bicycles and had breakfast at the mango tree cafe. To get there we biked along the river where there were some ruins half sundered, and then took a beautiful one minute stroll through a banana plantation that led us to a gorgeous view of the river from terraced seats where we enjoyed lemon Ginger lassies and coconut paranthas. After breakfast we decided to bike to the vatalla temple, that supposedly was the highlight of hampi and had musical columns. However after asking about 10 people who all pointed us in the wrong direction uphill for about an hour, we turned around and decided to check out the royal center first. The royal center was amazing, packed with all kinds of ruins, underground chambers, reflection pools, caves, elephant stables and detailed carvings in and arounds temples I studied in depth. After being thoroughly sore, tired and a little sunburned, we got lunch and gave in to getting a rickshaw to the vitalla temple. There was actually a movie being shot there when we arrived, and though it was by far the best preserved temple with the most complicated carvings, we were really tired and ready to go home, plus the musical columns were off limits because they were falling apart from being hit too much.
We slept well that night and got up at 5 am to catch our train to goa.
Seina told me that I could do whatever I wanted in Hampi and she w
ould go along for the ride. I decided to return the favor in Goa and let Seina call the shots of what she wanted to do. She decided she just wanted to stick around the Calengute beach, which is the most populated/popular beach. Along the white sands are hundreds of beach shacks serving fresh seafood and various popular music. Goa is a totally unique place in India. Most people come for beaches that line the coast, but Goa is a small state that was occupied by the Portuguese among many others, and so there is a totally unique cuisine. The first day there we sc
outed out a bakery. We were told to try Bebinca, a tradional Goan desert. It had the texture of very thick crepes layered on top of each other making a cake with a thin layer of sweet nutmeg spice mixture. It was pretty amazing. Then Seina got a little adventurous and tried to order a haphazard eggs benedict, which looked terrible to me, but also ordered some Goan sausage which was rich in vinegar and spices and was also amazing. As we headed back to the hotel I decided to be a little adventurous myself. I took my first jet ski ride and then went parasailing, flying over the ocean with a billowing rainbow parachute ripping behind me and a boat peacefully pulling me forward. After my thrills for the day we spent the afternoon enjoying the ocean, sun and beach. The next day we also mostly hung around, though made it up to Arjuna to see this massive "flea market" which was more like a huge tourist market of anything you could think of, and the came back down through Maupusa to get Seina's mom some cashews and cocum, a kind of plant that has a very sour taste that is used a lot in curries. Next stop was Kerela.
On the overnight train, we shared the compartment with a nice young family and their 1.5 year old son Justin. I was planning on catching up on some reading or watching a movie, but I ended up spending the most of the 17 hour train ride playing with the toddler and talking to the father about the US film industry. We arrived in Alleppy on a muggy and cloudy evening. Our hotel was quite charming though. It was really more of a bungalow, with a nice porch and a view right on to the river, and we were told our houseboat would be at the gate right in front of our room in the morning to pick us up. We thought that was pretty awesome. Though breakfast was included, we were on our own for dinner. So we ventured into Alleppy looking for some good Kerelan food. Surprisingly we had a really hard time finding anything. I stopped at a little food stall that had some fish curry over cassava root. I decided to be a bit daring and tried it. It was actually quite tasty though cold. A light red curry and a whole fish fried, over a potato like root that was slightly sweeter. However I felt like he grossly over charged me which put me in a bit of a sour mood the rest of the night. However I surprisingly didn't feel ill at all from the cold, overpriced, fish curry, so I guess that made up for being overpriced.
In the morning as promised, our houseboat arrived right outside our door. We brought our
belongings on board our boat! It was a beautiful boat with an airconditioned room and an attached bathroom. Our bedroom had a huge window floor to ceiling window. On the deck was a dinning room table, chairs, TV and surround sound system. I spent most of my time upstairs, on a little mattress overlooking the river flying beneath me. Kerela is the "jungle book" Indi
a. Rich jungle, water everywhere, a small villages that are based on agriculture line the water ways. We wandered around the backwaters, an endless maze of various sized rivers that form more of an aquatic road system. Some rivers were more congested with boats and, in typical Indian fashion, the boat relentlessly honked at each other. There were even gas stations along the rivers and green signs stating how many kilometers it was to various locations. This houseboat was also quite possibly the best food I had on the trip. For lunch we had whole deep fried fish, green beans sauteed with chunks of coconut and mustard seeds, a slightly sweet curry with shredded carrots and coconut milk, a sambar full of various veggies, a whole stack of papadum, rice and a whole fresh pineapple for dessert. Afterwards Seina and I chilled on the roof of the boat and saw that there were some ripe coconuts right above our heads. I climbed up and got down two coconuts for us to have some fresh coconut water. When I brought them down to the people working on the houseboat to open for us, they looked extremely concerned. The thing was they only spoke the local language and didn't understand English or Hindi. They looked around cautiously and eventually took the coconuts. The best I could decipher from body language was that they could get in trouble because we took coconuts that weren't ours. It just never occurred to us that all the thousands of coconut trees that lined the backwaters belonged to specific people, though it makes sense when almost all food contains coconut that even though they grow everywhere they are still a very valuable crop. The rest of the afternoon was lazy, just enjoying the boat ride. We eventually stopped at a little shop where fresh seafood was sold. We bought a single Tiger Prawn that was a Kilogram and seriously as big as a lobster. I was under the impression that this boat ride included a trip to see the local village life which included seeing coir making, boat building, local fishing practices, and toddy (palm beer) tapping. However it started to get dark and we still hadn't stopped at a village. This was when the lack of communication became an issue. We tried calling people, but in the end I just had to accept that it wasn't happening. I was actually pretty upset about it because the only reason I agreed to doing the pre-packaged house boat instead of bargaining for one when we arrived in Alleppy was because if we combined the boat ride and the village tour it cut out a day of traveling to another location, and Seina didn't feel confident that we could find a house boat that did all of that in the short time frame we had. Though I was upset, I settled down, journaled a lot and really enjoyed the second round of food for dinner.
In the morning we had breakfast and dropped off. After wandering around aimlessly before in Alleppy, we decided there wasn't much reason to stick around, so we found the bus stand and high tailed it to Cohin. We found our hotel and then went to go wander off. Cohin is made up of a bunch of little islands. We took the local ferry for 2.5 rupees each to get from the mainland to Fort Cohin. We made our first stop to be the palace. It wasn't really much of a palace and even the belongings inside weren't that spectacular, but there were a series of really exceptionally beautiful and well preserved paintings of the Ramayana. There was also a lot of interesting history in there as well. Afterwards we made a pilgrimage to "Jew Town." Hanukkah started on December 1st while we were in Goa. I couldn't find any Hanukah candles so I settled with lighting two normal candles at sunset, on the beach and said the prayers for the first night. After that I had a hard time finding even candles, I thought surely in Jew Town I could find some Hanukah candles. Seina and I wandered around for a few hours, we saw the outside of the synagogue, and a ton of antique stores with truly amazing pieces, including entire carved doors, archways and a whole really old boat. Even after talking to a sweet Jewish lady named Sarah who was observing the sabbath, I still couldn't find any candles.
We got back on the ferry to go to the northern tip of Fort Cochin that holds the unofficial emblem of Kerela which is a long stretch of Chinese fishing nets.
We found some men fishing by simply throwing a line with some bait into the river. Seina decided to try her hand at it, and was pretty terrible, but in fairness it was her first time fishing and the guy was very kind about her using up all his bait and breaking his line without catching anything. We wandered around and eventually decided to see a cultural show. I really wanted to see the classic Kerelan dance called Kathakali. It is a very theatrical classical Indian dance that puts a lot of emphasis on story telling through facial expressions, make up and costume. We opted to see a cultural show which had a variety of things, including getting to watch the make-up process, a Kathakali performance, a Kerelan acrobatic martial art show, a Bharatnatyam piece, and about three other different classical Indian styles. During the make-up process I befriended a rickshaw driver to take me to the fishing nets so I could take a picture and get back quickly without missing much of the make-up process. Throughout the trip Seina and I had been saying we were from Delhi, usually in an effort to avoid being ripped off. At times when trying to get into places for the much cheaper Indian price, we would pretend I was deaf to not give us away with my american accent when speaking Hindi. The rickshaw driver offered to take us to the ferry for free if we stopped by a shop and "pretended" we were americans, we were strictly instructed not to speak Hindi and only English. We actually did this a few times throughout the trip, making deals with the rickshaw drivers to look around shops that gave them deals on tires or gas in exchange for bringing them customers. Many drivers suggested we say we were from Italy, but we usually convinced them that saying we were from America was better because we spoke English. Usually the drivers explicitly told us not to buy anything because it was all overpriced. I have experienced this "scam" many times throughout Asia, but I really found it quite fun when I was "in" on it and not misled. After looking at some stores, we headed back to our hotel and called it a night, reorganizing our stuff in preparation for our way back home to Delhi the next day.
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So we arrived in Delhi at about midnight on the 5th and I decided to leave as early as I could on the 7th to meet Abe and Keith in Rishikesh, making the 6th a particularly hectic day. So as not to bore you with logistical details and get to the interesting (food) part of my day, I will just say in short that I had a lot of things to do including finding warm clothes I didn't bring to India because where I was going next was projected to be highs of 40 and lows below freezing. Furthermore, a close friend of Seina's family was coming to visit that day, and the agenda was to eat amazing food and take her Sari shopping. I got everything I needed to get done, and in-between had some phenomenal meals.
The first place we went to for lunch was a restaurant called Darsan in a 5 star hotel. Funny enough it was South Indian food. The entire South Indian trip, I was honestly really pleased with the majority of the food that we ate, but Seina (with a few exceptions) was rather disappointed by most of the food. When we went to this restaurant I understood why. We all got thalis which is like a set meal. Thus far my experience of a Thali has been usually rice, dal, and a vegetable or two with perhaps some yogurt. This seafood thali had at least 12 dishes, all served in little bowls around the rim of a larger plate. There was a whole bowl of rasam (like a thinner sambar), a plate of crispy papadums with tamarind chutney, tomato chutney, coriander chutney, and coconut chutney, and these were the best chutneys I had ever had. The main plate then came with tamarind rice, yogurt rice, kerelan fish curry, prawns in a masala sauteed in coconut oil, lobster in a red thick curry paste, a light coconut milk curry, and about five others I am forgetting. It was an overwhelming tasting menu, I couldn't finish any of it and then they came around offering if I wanted refills on anything.
The next place we went to for dinner and is called the Kebab factory. Kebab here basically means barbecue or grilled, and Tandoori is basically the Indian version of barbecue sauce. The appetizer course was really all I could eat. It consisted of round after round of amazing grilled foods--from a patty of spiced meat as tender as pate, chicken bursting with flavor and a singe of smokey grilled, broccoli, paneer, fish, a variety of breads, and a plethora of other amazing things. I wish I could be more specific because it was all amazing, but I was quite overwhelmed and still quite full from the awesome lunch we had earlier. After the kebabs from which I was ready to burst, there was the main course of rice with three different dals. I honestly couldn't even take a bite. Then after sitting and digesting for a little bit, they came out with no less than six deserts! I could only stretch my stomach to try two. Kulfi has always been one of my favorite Indian deserts, it is homemade saffron ice cream served in popsicle form, and this was probably the best Kulfi I had ever had. The next desert was really special. Remember when I went to Old Delhi and had that paan? That leaf that had like 90 different colorful ingredients on it rolled up in a delicious rose syrup and mouth freshening mouthful? Well this place turned that crazy concoction into an ice cream! Truly special, different and delicious.
I left Delhi very full and excited to see Abe and Keith.
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I met Abe and Keith at the place Abe and I stayed at last time we met in Rishikesh, a little guest house called "Last Chance" near the ashram where the Beatles composed most of the White Album. In general it was a relaxed couple of days, drinking chai, warming ourselves by the fire, eating apple samosas and taking a couple of mini excursions. Rishikesh is pretty much how I remembered it, laid back and touristy. It was really nice to see friends from Last Chance again and just kinda chill after all the hectic moving around.
On the third day Keith and I started our long journey to Dharmsala. This is where we are now and are very much enjoying the calm mountain life. It is totally beautiful here, and the Tibetan food is amazing. Keith and I have already found our favorite Momo lady.
Ok that was long. I am sure I will have more to say about Dharmsala when I get back to Delhi, but that is all for now.
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