Hi everybody!

Here are some pictures from my trip to India. I went to the Southwesternmost state called Kerala for 2 weeks and stayed with my friends Mark and Asenath who are living/working over there for a year. I'm new to Blogging so formatting is a struggle. I'm trying to put captions by each picture. I hope it works! :o)

Love,
Charlotte



Holy cow! I'm really in India. Asenath and I are on her roof drinking Vodka with lemons squeezed in it to celebrate and talking excitedly about everything we've been doing and want to do. My luggage was lost but I don't care. It's 4am and some explosions have just gone off in the distance to ward off evil spirits. Then some chanting begins over loud speakers. I think it's Muslim although the area I'm in is predominantly Hindu. The daily smoky haze of coconut husk fires begins wafting through the palm canopy. That's what everyone cooks with and I love the smell.


Here is their house. They live on the second floor. Swank, huh? The owners live on the first floor, a nice family of four. The lady of the house stands in her doorway, just under this balcony, and visits with her neighbor who sits on the concrete wall I'm standing in front of to take the photo. And then another neighbor has a perch further down the walkway, and so on like that. I am very impressed by the strength of family and community in India. They seem very solid, kind, reasonable, tolerant and well-adjusted. That's a funny word to use but I don't know how else to describe it.


Here is the inside of the house. No screens, air conditioning, or hot water. Electricity randomly stops. We each have mosquito nets and the temperature is roughly 75 degrees year round. Other than for the occasional computer use, electricity didn't seem very relevant. About 1/3 of the people I saw didn't wear shoes but didn't seem to mind or maybe even chose not to. Their feet are clearly much tougher than mine. People would work digging ditches hacking away at the rocky ground with sharp hoes -- no shoes. It didn't seem to stop them from accomplishing just as much as someone with shoes. I'm stunned by how full lives are here with so few material possessions. I don't think of myself as a materialistic person but when I see a whole city functioning smoothly at such a productive level having to make do with so many tattered ramshackle repaired things, I realize I'm overly attached to my stuff.




Mark, Asenath and Justin waving in the Arabian Sea getting ready to boogie board, which is like surfing on your tummy. Indians don't swim so all the bathers you see are tourists. The Indian men try to be respectful but seem rather stunned and just stand there staring when they see a Western woman in a bikini.








Indians go to the beach in the same clothes they wear in the city - saris, long pants, tucked in shirts, and shoes. They seem formally dressed for the beach compared to what I'm used to but that's the norm here. The dogs on the beach are adorable. There are quite a few that live here just happy and free. Someone took it upon himself to have them spayed/neutered and maybe he feeds them too. They seem very independent and play with anyone who will throw a stick into the waves. The dogs in the city look like their lives are significantly harder than these beach dogs.


They use squat toilets, which I now wish we had in the States. They really make much more sense. I heard that the babies don't wear diapers and are potty trained way earlier than Westerners. I can see why. It's much easier for a child to squat than to climb up on a pedastal. So you have two options, you can toss cups of water at yourself or use the spray hose. Nifty, eh?







I guess this is a goofy picture but I was struck by the frankness of the instructions. I love that they encourage you to hum a tune and enjoy.











The houses are a jumbly close arrangement all higgledy-piggledy. Every morning I hear the sounds of goats, chickens and dogs. Shortly after I hear the slap of laundry as the women beat the living daylights out of the clothes. Each house has a well and a tall slab of concrete where they do the laundry. Then it's hung on the roof or wherever. The houses are made of concrete or brick. Traditionally roofs are tile but more commonly now are made of metal. The whole town is under a canopy of coconut palms which they use in so many ways.


Like this roof for example. They take the fronds, which can be like 10 feet long, split them down the rib, weave the leaves without taking them off of the rib, then layer them like shingles.
They spin the fibers into a rope called coir that is used to fill all the mattresses. There are ladies on the side of the road with machetis and a pile of coconuts. You can walk up to them and they lop off the top of a big green coconut and pop a straw in it. They cook with shredded coconut and everything in Kerala is cooked with coconut oil.





Kovalam, our home base, is a small fishing town. There is a tourist strip only a couple of blocks long along the beach that has shops and restaurants. Otherwise it's like this.










Two lines of men are hauling in the fishing nets. In the evening the restaurants will have fresh fish and prawns lopped up on display along the boardwalk to advertise what's cookin'.











Everpresent Spirituality

Every day throughout the day I see evidence of people expressing thanks, making gestures of respect, or praying. These extremely fragrant flowers are carefully sewn together with tiny knots in perfect strands. The women wear them in their hair but they are also frequently used to adorn shrines. They only last a day or two so people buy them fresh every day. He is wrapping them in a giant lily pad.



































This shrine is along the road to the beach. I can't remember all of the Hindu deities. I wish I had something like baseball cards to keep track of all the fantastic stories for each of them.











This is referred to as a tank and is located at the base of the temple in the next picture. Before people had plumbing this is where everyone came to get their water. I think the water is considered holy and feeding the fish is good karma.









This huge temple is located in the heart of the oldest part of the capital of Kerala, the city of Trivandrum.











This little shrine is on the path from the street to our house. One night it was spruced up with a bunch of fresh flowers and candles. An old gentlman saw us admiring it and stopped to gleefully explain why they were celebrating. The people in Kovalam are so friendly. As they pass on scooters they call out helllloooo and wave. Little kids approach you with big smiles and say "hi, please where are you from?" So sweet.






As you walk through town you can see a Muslim mosque and in the next block a Hindu shrine and in the next block a Christian church. There doesn't seem to be any tension or difficulty with so many beliefs co-existing. With all of the hub-bub and conglomeration everywhere I look there is a feeling of fluidity to the interactions of the people. In New York the energy felt more like a pulse. In India it feels like the current of a river.





This is a 2000 year old temple for Shiva that was tucked away in the residential area of Kovalam. Shiva is the Supreme God of Hinduism. All other Hindu Gods and Goddesses are part of him. He is static and dynamic; oldest and youngest; the beginning and the end; creator and destroyer. He's formless, timeless and spaceless.
Sounds good to me!







Street Life

This is the bazaar in Trivandrum. Instead of malls or department stores, there is a little store for everything. There are also people with card tables or just sitting on a blanket on the sidewalk selling things. It could be anything from underwear to gooseberries to raw meat hanging on a pole ready to be cut to order.








The shops have an open front and don't go in very far. What you can see in this picture is the entirety of one of the larger shops.













The chai guy! I drink chai about 5 times a day. They make it scaldingly hot then repeatedly pour it like this to cool it off. They serve it in glasses which you stand there to drink and return the glass. No throwaway cups.









When you are purchasing something you can sit on one of the little chairs they have crammed in the side of their stall. We're getting sharjas which are sooooo good. Milk is sold in small bags in India. To make sharja they toss a frozen bag of milk in a blender with cashews, bananas, cinnamon, and sometimes protein powder. Yum!














This is the equivalent of a convenience store. There's one on every couple of blocks and they have all the usual stuff like cigarettes, sodas, candy, magazines, and bags of milk. The tan pile on the ground by Asenath's leg is the coconut husk rope, coir, that I mentioned earlier. I guess they use a lot of rope because I see piles like this all over the place. The other thing I see is piles of the coconut husks cut in half drying out so they can be used for cooking. I'm tellin' ya, ya can't go anywhere without seeing coconuts here.




This lady has a cloth circle on her head that she is balancing that big silver pot on. They don't even need to use their hands to keep the load up there.
This is back in Kovalam, in the residential area. You can see it's not crowded at all. One of the things people told me before I came here was that I would be constantly packed in people. That hasn't been my experience.






At the end of the day, street vendors sweep little piles of debris into the gutter and burn the trash. I like these fires and I like that nobody is freaking out that there are open fires all over the place in a busy thoroughfare.








Transportation

This is a really common site. Most people use motorcycles and scooters instead of cars. As a matter of fact, there are almost no cars where I was. The women ride side-saddle. Often there is also a kid-o between mom and dad and a baby in front of dad looking as chill as you please. No special child safety seats. Just a baby straddling the fuel tank with his little hands in front of him looking totally capable and calm. Isn't that amazing?!






Auto rickshaws! My favorite! I love these things. They're a total blast. This is not representative of how it normally looks. Normally there are rickshaws, three abreast, jockeying for position with scooters, motorcycles, trucks and buses. Everyone almost continuously taps friendly beep-beeps. Then all of a sudden there are two big trucks competing with each other for the road and headed directly at you! It's HILARIOUS! It seems impossible but everybody just adjusts their positions. There's that fluid thing I was talking about. No shouting or getting angry. No accidents. Just a crazy fun ride. Fascinating.


Here's the inside of a rickshaw. These baby posters are popular. They say things like "I'm so happy every day!" There are also usually stickers of gods and sparkly jangly decorations hanging across the front window. My favorite one is a plastic bird that is mounted on the outside. When the driver drives the wings flap.







Mark is in the dark blue shirt at the counter trying to make train reservations for us for tomorrow. He is talking through a hole in the plexiglass. See the guy in the light blue shirt? He has started trying to conduct his transaction with the same agent through the same opening. If you're not politely persistent, the agent will actually start working with the interloper. I love a lot of things about India but this is not one of them. It makes me coo-coo. Also, they're not really into lines. People just generally make their way to the front. Waiting your turn seems like such an automatic way of conducting business that I can't even get my mind around doing it any other way. It will just have to remain one of the mysteries of India for me.

Random observations


This is the kind of posh store you go to to buy your wedding sari and a special piece of cloth like the orange one Mark is wearing but fancier. There were beautiful silks and embroidery. The gentleman sitting on the platform displays whatever you request, pulling folded sari material from shelves behind him. The sari is one loooong piece of fabric. After you pick out what you want, the tailor cuts off a couple of feet from the end and makes the little mid-driff bearing t-shirt that you wear with the sari.




I found the fitting room at the sari store to be very encouraging.














Jackfruit is about the size of a loaf of bread and grows straight out of the trunk. Crazy, huh? I kept looking for it for sale or for a ripe one on a tree so I could try it but didn't have any luck. When people talk about eating them they have an unusual response which made me really curious. Their response is something like "it's strange and you won't like it but I do." They don't seem to want to say what it tastes like.






Big ol' pink and white bougainvilleas growing like mad.














The blue sign says this is a surgeon's office. People wait in that caged porch. I think surgeon must mean something different here, like, just a regular doctor's office.

The red sign on the ground is some sort of street marker. I see them sticking out of the sidewalk, although usually white and usually next to the street instead of the wall.











Some wacky hotel architecture so we are eating lunch here.














The two red pails say "Fire" and are filled with sand.











Mark and I are out on a scooter ride around Kovalam and stopped to get gas. I took this picture because the dude in the cage represents another common experience I'm having here. I look at the way something is arranged and can't for the life of me figure out what's going on. Why is the guy in the cage? There's a building behind us (the one in picture above) where an attendant could have a counter. Is the cage meant to secure the cash register? But there's two feet of open space below him. Nobody else thought it was unusual. They probably thought I was unusual for staring at the guy in the cage. Anyway, it made me giggle so I thought I would show you.


They paint their huge work trucks in this fantastic detailed way. Isn't that the coolest?! I love it. The trucks are owned by individuals. Having one is a great source of livlihood for the family. I don't know if you can read it but up at the top it says "Donate blood." Mark explained to me that if they include a public announcement in the decorations they get a tax break.











This is the palace in the center of Trivandrum. I can't show you the inside because we aren't allowed to take pictures. The wood on the second floor is actually an enclosed verandah. There are slits too small to see here but when you're in the verandah you can actually see out. It goes all the way around the whole palace. Nobody has lived in it for a long time but when they did the women were sequestered. I would imagine these slatted verandas were frequented by them trying to get a glimpse of the world outside the walls of the palace.



Restaurants aren't really common here I guess because everybody eats at home. This is a kind of utilitarian vegetarian meal hall where we're having lunch in Trivandrum. That's a banana leaf I'm eating off of and also lining Asenath's metal tray. They really eat off of banana leaves. This isn't just something done for tourists. So they put a pile of rice in the middle then splat about six different things around it that you dip your rice in. There are no utensils. Everyone eats with their hands only. There's a sink in the same room with the tables where you wash up before and after your meal. No paper towels. I'm surprised by how quickly my hands dry. I have absolutely no idea what I'm eating but it's delicious. When you finish it off, they come around and offer you more.



In Kovalam, in the couple of blocks of tourist area, there's this Western restaurant. Check out the French breakfast.












Here's one of those sinks in the dining room of the Western restaurant.













Oh man! This traditional band is amazing. She's doing vocalizations I've never heard before. There is a drummer, a guy behind him with some unrecognizable percussion instrument, the fiddler and that little white box emitting a sound like a sitar, I think. All together they take me into a dreamy trance. We're in the civic auditorium where traditional dance and music is performed a couple of times a week.





The bats in India are the size of cats. I was walking down the street in the middle of a busy part of town and a whole flock of them about 10 feet from my head just took off into the evening sky. So cool. The one is this picture is mummified, poor thing. It is at the entrance to a B&B we are staying in. It seemed like it just had to be a bad omen but nothing untoward happened so I guess we got lucky. :o)







Here is the inside of the B&B. It's a 100 year old traditional home with rosewood ceilings.


















The proprietor says these long arms are for holding your coffee while you read.














Going to a place to get on the internet is part of our regular itinerary since there's none at the house. Plus the electricy is unreliable at home anyway. This one is pretty fancy compared to where we usually go. Usually it's just a table with a computer or two. I like the simplicity of it, the almost complete lack of marketing and flash.





Houseboat Adventure

We're in Aleppey now getting ready to rent a houseboat. The canals go all around town and continue into the countryside. Mark is haggling like a pro to secure the best deal. Asenath and I are observing and being kept entertained with small talk by guys that are like business wranglers.








Okay, 3.5 hours of haggling later we're under way! The dynamics of haggling are fascinating although if I had to do it I think I would have a caniption fit. Thank YOU, Mark. So we have the food we requested plus 3 bottles of wine that they will have to send out on another boat to us because they have to go to a special store and stand in line. We also have a cook, a captain, and a back up guy. In the picture on the right that's three pirogue-like boats lashed together hauling rocks.




We're now further into the farming community. on either bank is a single row of houses nestled among the trees. Directly behind them are the far reaching rice paddies. I'm on the deck upstairs. Downstairs is another open seating area, two bedrooms with their own bathrooms, a dining area in between the bedrooms and a galley on the very back. This boat is so totally freakin cool! Surprisingly, there don't seem to be any mosquitos.






Ladies on the left bathing. They kind of soap up under their clothes then just sit down in the water. Lady on the right wacking the daylights out of laundry. Isn't that house cute?











Our boat stopped so we could look at stuff. Each village has a "snake boat". (That's the English name for it. Their name for it has nothing to do with snakes.) It's super duper long and holds about 120 paddlers plus a group that stands and sings and drums to set the pace. Each village has one they race annually. This is a special barn just for the boat.







Lunch! We're docked next to a rice paddy. There's a path right there that people who live here are walking to and fro on. Occasionally a goat wanders by. There's another opening like this on the other side so it catches a cross breeze and helps keep the bedrooms on either side cool.









Maxin' and relaxin', eating fried bananas for dessert and playing cards while we float along.














Here's Mark and Asenath!

I want to take this opportunity to thank them so much for their generous and wonderful hosting! Yall are the greatest and I love you lots!










It turns out that in India people don't really drink alcohol at all. This wine is made here is good but I get the impression it's a novelty. We asked them to be sure to have a wine bottle opener in the provisions they put together for us. They said "yes, yes, of course" and waved us off. Well, now we're in the middle of rice paddies and they give us a beer bottle opener. So this is Asenath working on it with my tooth brush.






Two broken pens and a destroyed tooth brush later, she got the bottle open last night! Yea!

So today we're floating along, la la la, and the captain goes under a bridge. Then, kind of in slow motion, we hear crrrunnnnch! Whoops, Mark and Asenath's bedroom wall got scraped off! We decide we don't care so the crew continues on. Then a little later the chain that goes under the boat from the wooden spoke steering wheel to the rudder goes Pop! and we start drifting into a tree on the bank. Another crrrrunnnch! So I guess we're going to hang out here a while. I feel bad for the crew because, even though it's not their fault, what a pain in the neck.




A bunch of curious kids came up to check things out. Asenath is taking their photos and showing them. They were adorable and charming. It seems like all the kids here are.
























We got back to Kovalam and I got really really sick for 5 days. Dadgumit! But, thank goodness, I got well enough to travel by the time my flight was leaving. My flights had multiple problems that came to about 36 hours of delays. Air India put me up in a 5 star hotel and paid for my meals. I got home and slept for about 24 hours straight. Went to work. Got the flu and was sick for 4 more days. So things were kind of rough there at the end but it was worth it!!!!

And that concludes my presentation. Any questions? :o))