So, how was Kerala?
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Sacred radiator works!
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The people are friendly, sometimes overwhelmingly so. They are also nearly all religious with
about half in the area were we were being Hindu and the other half Christian, but there were
sizeable minority groups of Muslims, Parsees, Zoroastrans, Jains etc, and even Jews. The
Christians all seemed to have English names such as Anthony, Joseph, Thomas, and there were
Roman Catholics, Latin Catholics, Syrian Catholics as well as an assortment of protestants and
fundamentalists - though the various Catholics had the biggest churches. The Syrian Catholics
claimed to be founded in 47AD, so went back a long way. The Jewish community claimed to go back
to about 100AD when the Romans threw the Jews out of Palestine and they lived very happily in
Kerala until the 1600s when the Portuguese arrived. They all seem to live and have lived
together in harmony, even when the rest of India is or was fighting about religion.
Nearly everyone seems very honest. You have to check your change because they are lousy at
arithmetic and give you too much. The 2 exceptions were the guys who nicked my camera and Ann's
glasses from our bikes when we weren't paying attention. Unfortunately, as a result I lost the
pictures from the later part of our trip.
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Jeep we push-started
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Coracle on the Backwaters
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I thought the meals were mostly dire, with no taste apart from the excessive spices, though Ann
was more positive. The fresh fruit and vegetables were excellent. I got bad diarrhoea, and
stupidly spent over a week taking nothing but Pepto-Bismol until I went to the chemist and got a
pile of medicine, including a course of antibiotics, for R96 - almost instant cure. Alcohol is
expensive and hard to get away from the main tourist places. The good news for me was losing
about 4Kg!
Everywhere was cleaner than we expected, with hardly any bad smells. But the noise and litter
were hard to take. The noise results from all vehicles hooting more or less continuously during
the day, all the places of worship belting out calls to prayer from about 5:30 in the morning,
and vans with loudspeakers wandering around blasting out propaganda - probably political. The
litter that matters is plastic bottles and bags, which Indians discard with no concern whatever.
Even otherwise idyllic places like the Backwaters have their carpets of Hyacinths spotted with
numerous plastic bottles.
I rather enjoyed the traffic. The basic rule appears to be: if there's a gap, go for it
regardless, but if someone else gets there first, just shrug. So, although everyone is assertive
to the point of lunacy, there's no road rage. And we found that as pedestrians and cyclists we
could be assertive too, and bigger vehicles conceded gracefully. Mind you, you only have to get
this wrong once!
At any rate, we thought cycling and using homestays was an excellent way to enjoy Kerala. We
met many local people, and saw the countryside, the villages, the wildlife and the scenery far
better than could be achieved in a car or bus. The only alternative I'd consider would be buying
a motorbike.
In the end, we were very glad we'd been; Ann wants to go again, but I'm not so sure.
