Happy 2011!

Happy New Year! We're moving... sort of.

Kate is putting the 'move' into Sepahi on the Move today with the first 8 posts of a new photoblog entitled "Sepahi 365: a Project 365 satellite of Sepahi on the Move". The new photoblog is a photo-a-day challenge to chronicle the evolution of skills and experiences over the course of a year. It is hosted by Wordpress and can be found at https://sepahionthemove.wordpress.com/

So tweak your RSS feeds or add on a bookmark. These are exciting times that promise to bear creative and dynamic shots from wherever the Photographer on the Move should find herself this year. 2011 shall be a year of candid shots, portraiture, infrared photography, light painting, cityscapes, macro adventures and as many DIY projects that can be undertaken without voiding her life insurance policy!

Check in daily and comment often!

See you over at https://sepahionthemove.wordpress.com/ !!

The photographer is back on the move.... online!

It's now been categorically proven that my blogging skills, a.k.a., my inability to commit to publishing my tales in text form, are sorely lacking. I've always been more of a photo-essayist, I'll admit. Since figuring out that my memory is simply non-existent and then picking up a camera in order to document everything from post-it notes to epic adventure trips around the globe, I've been lucky enough to be encouraged by so many to publish my images, submit them for prizes, and even open up a virtual business. Well, looks like it's finally time!

This summer brings with it the founding of Sepahi on the Move! Borne from my eponymous blog title, it's still in its early stages of growth. Part travel photography, part everyday visual poetry, it will be an eclectic mix of images and composite projects. I'm so excited to be sharing this work!

I sincerely hope that you'll drop by. Sepahi on the Move will be part of the Etsy collective of shops, together with this blog and a Flickr presence. Stay tuned... more will be unveiled soon!!


Sepahi.

Mad trains, mad planes, and mad times in Madurai

Riding the trains in India is, of course, a character-building experience, as we’ve learned. The train ride from Kanyakumari to Madurai was no different. I secured a seat in the overcrowded carriage and buckled down for a 4 hour trip at night. With each stop, more and more people got onto the train and the compartment became more and more full to the point of people sitting on the floor, children lying on the floor under seats and at my feet and people hanging out of the door openings. Honestly, I doubt that Holocaust victims were packed any tighter in German-occupied Europe than we were on that train. The density of people was just crushing. I managed to tune out a large part of the experience with my iPod, but the staring of the surrounding passengers managed to penetrate my bubble of tranquility. It’s not even the staring that’s the worst part, it’s more the gawking, pointing and talking as they keep motioning back to me during their conversations. It’s blatantly apparent that they’re talking about me right in front of me and it just feels horrible. It has the effect of making you feel like a circus animal. Me no likey.

If traveling and arriving in a new place by night and enduring the staring and gesturing of my fellow passengers wasn’t trying enough, I then received a text message from Hiral that changed everything: “Air India on strike. Flight cancelled. Trying to find you new flight”

Shit. Now what?

If I knew I wasn’t flying out as planned, I would have stayed in Kanyakumari where things were familiar, I had friends, and I knew my way around. Not having a hotel booked in Madurai, arriving in an unknown place at night, dealing with the zoo animal experience, knowing that Air India is the only carrier that runs from Madurai to Mumbai, and missing the good times in Kanyakumari all became too much and I broke down for the second time on a train in India. The staring and gesturing only intensified when this happened and I could do nothing to curb it but keep my eyes averted (which is tough when there are people in every last nook and cranny of an enclosed space) and bear it.

Anyway, mad train experience over, I made it into Madurai and needed to first find a hotel room for the night and then a meal and then begin to sort out all of the flight business. Because Air India is the only carrier who flies that route, that meant that, by definition, I’d have to move on to another city to get a flight back to Mumbai. The two closest airports were Trivandrum-- a good 5-6 hours away, or Chennai-- 8 hours away. Great. Awesome. Just what you want to deal with at the end of a travel circuit when all your clothes are dirty, you’re exhausted, and ready to snap.

I texted my friend Vikram in Kanyakumari out of desperation and it turned out that he came through in fine style. He told me to go across the street from the station and find a friend of his who runs a travel agency. Within one half hour I not only had a hotel room (within my budget, no less) and a hot meal, but flight plans were in the works with a reservation to get a luxury bus to Chennai the following night. I wound up getting the new plans sorted out for just over $25 more than my original plan and was even set to arrive in Mumbai a couple of hours before the Air India flight! Go Vikram and Mr-Travel-Agent-Extraordinaire, Boomi!!

With this new plan in place I had one free day in Madurai to check out the temple at the centre of the city, the Sree Meenakshi temple. It was absolutely gorgeous. Not quite as atmospheric as the one I got to visit outside of Kanyakumari, probably because of the hordes of people milling around it and the fees they charged foreign visitors but not Indian visitors, but it was beautiful. The temple is made up of many towers enclosing the inner sanctum and several large courtyards. The towers are huge and made up of thousands of sculptures painted in blindingly bright colours. Apparently, every couple of years, the sculptures are repainted in order to keep them nice and bright. Well done, Madurai!

What started in madness managed to turn into a relatively good stay in Madurai.

The trip to Chennai, on the other hand, was another dive into the madness.

I boarded my overnight luxury bus at 9pm only to be sat in the foremost front seat. This wouldn't be a problem at home, but in India, it’s not a good configuration. Firstly, in the front you’re getting an unobstructed view of all of the nonsense going on with the traffic in front of you-- people driving on the wrong side, rickshaws and motorbikes loaded with about 12 times their legal carrying capacity, cows, dogs, big trucks refusing to let you overtake them, and the occasional person carrying an astounding amount of material on their head. Secondly, to deal with all of the foolishness going on on the road, the bus driver honks his horn to either announce his presence, indicate he wants to overtake, threaten others or sometimes just to annoying the living hell out of me, I think. And we’re not talking a little beep-beep like on the Simpsons, or even the obnoxious latino horns you hear coming from cars with that ridiculous ‘La Raza’ decal on their windshield…. I talking a full on airhorn that sounds like an accelerated high pitched siren. There is no hope of sleeping on the sleeper bus when this is going on. So after 8 hours of lovely driving, I reached Chennai. Boomi had arranged for them to drop me at the airport since it was apparently on the way into town from where we were coming from. Of course, this didn’t pan out properly. The driver forgot or just decided not to and I got stuck having to argue it out with him at the central bus stand 25km from the airport. I had to get Boomi on the phone to remind the driver of his deal. They tried to tell me that it would cost “only” an additional RS300 to go out there… not cool since I had paid that much to get to Chennai and also because we specifically agreed he would take me to the airport. I stood my ground and said “Fine, if that’s what it’s costing, then you can pay for it-- you’re the one who made the error here”. Of course he wouldn’t have it and I wound up having to take a city bus to the airport for RS10. Useless. What made matters worse was that the bus left me off in front of the airport-- only it left me on one side of a 4-lane highway that passes in front of the airport. Great.

Now I was playing Frogger, the real-life edition, with luggage.

Needless, to say, I did find my way across and made my flight, but the recurring wish that I’d taken out some life insurance before leaving came back once more…

Kanyakumari-palooza

Armed with a nice, clean hotel room, a new friend, and the peace that comes from not being gawked at 24/7, I began to unwind thoroughly in Kanyakumari. I took in sunrises and sunsets that broke my heart to look at them and spent entire afternoons people-watching and soaking up the sea air on the steps of the waterfront. One thing about Kanyakumari that was striking was how safe it felt. The lack of hassle meant that I was comfortable walking around after sundown and late into the night frequently, just to absorb the beachy night breeze and watch young men playing football on the promenade. It reminded me a lot of Luxor, and the temple at night where we’d go and eat falafel with the women sitting out by the mosque while the men prayed and the boys played football. Very mellow, and very me. My second day in Kanyakumari, I bumped into Vikram again and we got to talking for several hours. With my new friend guiding the way, I got to discover some unbelievable sprawling beaches just outside the town-- bigger than the teeny spit that passes for a beach in Kanyakumari proper-- and ride on a motorcycle - SO exhilarating-- see a 1500-year-old Hindu temple that defies description (and prohibits photography-- I was obviously crushed)-- and visit an ancient fort site from the 18^th century. My trusty Rough Guide all but wrote-off Kanyakumari, giving it only a page and a half, mostly practical details and hardly any tourism info on sites like these. I was only too happy to be able to explore the area with a local I could trust since I never would have been made aware of any of these sites without him.

Sidenote: I’m disappointed in you, Rough Guide, if I’d listened to you I would have all but skipped right over Kanyakumari!! I shake my fist!

One thing that the guidebook did recommend checking out was the two rocks set out from the shore-- one hosting an ashram where a famous swami meditated sometime around the turn of the century, and the other a memorial to a celebrated Tamil poet. I boarded the ferry to the ashram to sit and meditate for a while and then exited out to the terraced courtyard surrounding it. The meditation room, if not Kanyakumari itself, seemed to reset my travel-clock, erasing the earlier rough times and filling me with calm and hope for the rest of the 2-month trip. I didn’t realize just how tense I’d gotten till I had the chance to let it go and shut the hell up for a few minutes. Meditation might just have a new convert.

Another stroke of good luck, or karma, that found me in Kanyakumari was the fact that the annual festival of the local goddess, Kanya Devi, was going on while I was in town. This meant that for either 9 or 10 days pilgrims were flooding the town, and the temple, and many rituals were being enacted, much to my delight. Each morning began with chanting and a procession of the temple elephant from his pen or enclosure or whatever down the main strip into the temple. Then, each night there was a live music performance right outside my hotel and very lively evening crowds making their way into the temple until about 8pm. Finally, on the the last day of the festival, a grand parade procession took to the street and made it's way from the temple, up the main drag and through the town, taking with it elephants, elaborately-costumed-dancers, drummers, trumpeters, and-- the main event-- the idol of the goddess Kanya Devi. Though I had a prime aerial view from my hotel room, I chose to watch from up-close downstairs as each new performer made their way past. When the time came for the goddess' idol to pass, things turned almost violent in that the onlookers threw enormous volumes of flowers and garlands-- offerings to the goddess-- at the idol and the man carrying it. Having never seen this kind of thing before, my first instinct was that the mob had turned on things, but then Vikram explained that it was a show of devotion and worship, not violence. Either way, it defied words. All that was left after the procession was the fading sound of the horn players and drummers, and massive amounts of flowers on the road.

Anyway, the area was magical and each day was bookended by the absolute wonder and beauty of the sunrise and sunset that took on a mythical feeling. I was sad to finally leave for Madurai but, as the old adage goes: all good things must come to an end. Tear...

On top of the world at the bottom of the subcontinent

Originally, when planning my next move from Cochin, I tried to find a room in Kanyakumari and was dismayed to find out that whatever places weren’t outright full were charging about RS600, RS700, or even upwards of RS1200 per night for a simple single room! Now, in reality, RS600 is only about $12, a steal for any hotel room. But when traveling for 2 months, those charges do add up and my budget only allowed for RS1000 per day for all expenses. So I made the decision to simply take the train to Kanyakumari, walk around, watch a sunset, and then get a bus or a train onwards to Madurai where I had managed to find a room for RS300. All that changed once I spent about 10 minutes in Kanyakumari. The air and the weather and the people all combined to make it a most hospitable environment. Absolutely everything about Kanyakumari enthralled me and I instantly regretted making a hotel reservation in Madurai and wished I could spend more time in this amazing new place. Then it dawned on me-- who says I can’t stay? I decided then and there that I would stay longer, and went to work looking for a hotel that might have rooms available. Just because the hotels in my guidebook were all full up and pricey, didn’t mean that everywhere would be packed, so I left my bags at a left-luggage shack and took a walk down the main drag of the town that leads to the temple and the waterfront to have a look.

Within about 5 minutes I had rustled up a room for the phenomenal rate of RS150!! I was elated and went and got my bags back, deposited them in my room, had a quick shower, and then went out to soak up life in Kanyakumari. By this point it was about 3:30 or 4:00 and sunset was fast approaching at 6, so I headed down to the waterfront to see what was going on there and stake out a good spot for sunset.

The best way I can describe Kanykumari’s waterfront is to refer to the Verona Beach setting of Baz Lurhman’s ‘Romeo and Juliet’ film. With stone steps leading into the sea at some points and grand facades and archways along the promenade, it was a beautiful sight to behold. Chock full of seashell stalls and little ice cream, roasted nut, and popcorn hawkers, the place had a laid back hippie feel to it. In fact, I’m a bit surprised that the hippies hit up Goa when Kanyakumari was available back in the 70s. I sat and enjoyed the atmosphere on the steps by the water for a while and then headed onwards to the tiny spit of sand that makes up the ‘beach’ in Kanyakumari. Within the town, this is the beach, but just outside of town there are miles upon miles of untouched gorgeous sandy beaches, I suppose that the one close at hand is popular just because there’s no need to leave town to get to it. So it’s always packed full of bathers. The boys and men jump in either in their pants, or just their underwear while the women only seem to wade in to their ankles or knees and do so fully dressed in their saris. I saw one family with two daughters who had bathing suits on. One. During an entire week. I guess bathing suits aren’t popular among the more traditional slices of Indian society even though seeing men stripped down to their tighty whities is perfectly ok.

Anyway, it was at this point, when I got to the beach to watch sunset, that I met one of the two people that would go on to change my trip as I knew it. Anna was sitting on the beach when I chatted her up and found out that she’s from Spain and has been volunteering in Andhra Pradesh for the last 2 months. We talked for hours and exchanged experiences of our travels and she gave me a great deal of hope to endure the occasional bad days just hearing the great times that she’s had and the touching moments she’s experienced here. The sunset was beyond beautiful, I can’t even describe it properly. The sun was huge and bright red and the sky stayed a mesmerizing shade of pink for a long time after the sun had set. It was truly magical. We kept chatting and chatting and eventually got hungry so we ventured out into the evening to find a restaurant. Both of us had been kept to a veg diet in our respective host situations so we went searching for some non-veg goodness. Enter Vikram. We met Vikram while we hunted for a restaurant that served meat. He was standing outside of his restaurant and saw us looking a bit lost and came to help. Unlike so many other profit-seeking locals I’ve encountered, Vikram was selflessly helpful. We told him what we were looking for and he obliged us with some recommendations that wound up leading us away from his (veg) restaurant. Very honest and a refreshing change from the usual “come-into-my-shop, I-give-you-good-price, hello-madam-come-have-a-look, or the old reliable are-you-from-america/england?. We had a lovely dinner and I was invited to come visit Spain once I get back from India (and I’m trying my damnedest to figure out a way to do it, too!). And then we said our goodbyes as Anna was leaving the next morning for Cochin and we headed off to our respective hotels.

Then, disaster. I got up to my room and sat down to go through my bag and prepare/organize for the next day. Then I began to itch. All along the bottoms of my legs I was suddenly very itchy and no amount of scratching relieved it. I couldn't understand what had happened. I hadn't been itchy the whole night. Kanyakumari had been a welcome relief from the mosquitoes that were abundant in Cochin. I guess the wind is a bit cruel to them there so there aren’t as many. Anyway, I was jumping out of my skin and scratching like mad when it dawned on me that the only surfaces that were bothering me were those in contact with the bed. And so I got up and took a closer look. There, coming out of the mattress itself were hundreds of tiny, almost microscopic ants all over the place. Eeew. It wasn’t even that there were a few stray ants marching around on top of the mattress, I had encountered that almost everywhere along the way in my travels, and it was fine. But these were emerging from the mattress itself. Gross. I marched downstairs, put on my sternest angry-Persian-girl face and roused the night watch guy. I said ‘There are ants in my bed’. He didn’t seemed to get it, so I tried again, ‘there are bugs, in the bed, all over!’. He smiled and nodded. Still didn’t get it. So I tried one last time, and gestured little creepy crawly tsk-tsk-tsk noises and made a ‘bed’ gesture. He finally got it. So he grabs another key and takes me to another room. It’s a double room on another floor, so I’m thinking ‘maybe this could work’. The bed looks impeccably clean and I sit down to disturb any would-be ants within, with no emerging ant response. So I’m about to say yes when I remember to check the bathroom to make sure it’s got a western toilet (I’m just not built for the squat toilets, fat girls with surgery-ed bum knees are just improperly prepared for that experience). I go into the bathroom and find the largest cockroach I’ve ever seen in my life. This thing was about 3 inches long, at least. It looked like it could eat me in my sleep. Like Men in Black were understating things. Like it could dispose of small animals in the wild. Holy fuck. I said ‘no, I can’t take this room’. He said they didn't have any others and that this was all I had to choose from. I said ‘Hell no” and dashed down the steps to go see Anna at her hotel. Luckily she had shown me where she was staying and I was able to go up to her room and tell her what had happened. I wound up staying with her that night and moving all of my things down the street like a maniac at 11:30 at night while sleepy-eyed locals watched me. Anna’s hotel charged me to stay, but luckily I got most of my money back from the first hotel and so things evened out in the end. I wound up taking over Anna’s room once she checked out and stayed another night. Crisis averted.

More on Kanyakumari next time!

The end of the line, and the end of the subcontinent

When we last left off I was leaving Cochin in Kerala for Kanyakumari in Tamil Nadu after a most off-putting three days spent being gawked at and chased and harassed. The only train that would take me to Kanyakumari left at 4:30AM from Cochin and so I made a reservation and rose at 2:30, got into a cab and dashed to the train station in the dead of night. The train was late in arriving, and even later in departing. The ticket I held in my hand said I would be seated in the 2^nd class sleeper section in a seat in Coach 20. So once the train pulled in I began walking the length of the train to find Coach 20. Coach fourteen, fifteen, sixteen….. seventeen….. eight--- wait, no coach eighteen, no nineteen, and certainly no twenty. WTF. So I get onto coach 17 and try to find someone to help me. Most people were asleep and those that were awake didn’t speak English. I finally find a kind-looking woman and make some gestures to indicate “Am I in the right place?” and show her my seat details. She strings together a sentence in English that basically said “This is the ladies’ carriage, and there’s no assigned seating. Sit anywhere.” So I resign myself to coach 17 and find an open seat. The train is organized in a sort of lopsided dual-sided bench scheme with long padded benches on one side of the aisle and single seats on the other side of the aisle. I find an open single seat across from some nuns and exhale thoroughly. Then I hear the skittering noise of insects and look around to find the carriage absolutely crawling with cockroaches. Small ones, medium ones, and, to my horror, a few big ones…. Oh. My. God.

At this point, the experience of the last 2 days and the train-seating fiasco all became overwhelming and I simply hugged my backpack toward me, obstructed my face, and broke down into silent tears. Luckily, most of the other passengers were asleep, and those that weren’t apparently thought I was just sleeping against my bag and I had one final shred of dignity left as I wept into my backpack.

I cried because of the seat mix-up. Because somewhere in the make-believe world of Indian Railways was my sleeper berth, waiting for me to curl up onto it and snooze away the 8 hour train ride. I cried because I missed home. Because I hate cockroaches. Because the seat I was in was near to the bathroom, that stunk (I never got the nerve to go and look in there, and was just grateful to God that I didn’t feel the urge to use the facilities the entire time I was on the train). I cried because I was ashamed of myself for having broken down. I was disappointed in my traveler hardiness. I thought I was made of more than that. I cried because I was in pain, the ‘padded’ benches were murder on the tailbone and back and so I was constantly trying to smooth out the eternal knots in my back. I cried because I was alone on a train in a strange country and didn’t know what lay ahead. The low point was upon me.

I managed only a few fleeting minutes of sleep here and there throughout the entire train ride. Between children crying, the train stopping and starting, and the infernal cockroaches, I couldn’t rest. Once day broke, however, some gorgeous sceneries presented themselves before me and I snapped photos of the Kerala and Tamil Nadu countrysides that could easily be from a tourism brochure. Mountains, rivers, palms, banana trees, and little villages abounded.

Finally, after the longest 8 hours of my life, the train pulled into Kanyakumari station. The end of the line, and the end of the subcontinent.

Everything changed for me at that point. I got off the train into a whole different world. The wind was cool and powerful coming off the water. The sun was brilliant and dazzling but not scorching. And the people…. the people didn't pay me hardly any attention! It was freeing to blend into the flow of things. Kanyakumari is a popular Indian tourist destination, but for some reason not many western tourists make it down there. I saw about 10 in total during my entire week there. Personally, I don’t get it-- when I was planning my trip to India, I knew that I had to go see Kanyakumari, it was just as essential as seeing the Taj Mahal or the Gateway of India. But it is a trek and I suppose not too many tourists make the effort to get there. For those that do, however, the reward is the most beautiful sunrises and sunsets conceivable and an otherworldly ocean breeze from the 3 converging bodies of water that make up Kanyakumari’s coastline: the Bay of Bengal, the Indian Ocean, and the Arabian Sea. Heaven.

Kanyakumari was, and still is, my favourite part of India, and quite possibly one of my favourite places in the world.

Tales from Kanyakumari next time!

Sex and the Subcontinent

In a very Carrie-Bradshaw-esque turn of events, I’m sitting in a cafe in Mumbai’s High Street Phoenix complex (basically a really big open air shopping mall with a bunch of western brand shops and a McDonalds at the center; I may or not be considering eating there for lunch-- it would be nice to have something familiar, you know?) updating ye olde blog and being one of those laptop-coffee-shop types.

Anyway, it’s a lovely cafe, serving cakes and smoothies. I got a mango slushie and a ginormous slice of pineapple cream cake for RS158…. About $3. I love this country! They’ve even got wifi here! They’re playing Aqua-- yes, as in ‘Barbie Girl’ and they’ve got a guitar sitting in the corner of the cafe under a sign that says ‘play me’. I gotta say, Indian cafes are kinda growing on me. I have yet to see a single Starbucks or Second Cup with guitars for the clientele to fool around on. Take notes North America! Whatever time I spent off the beaten path is now being rewarded with creature comforts, and it’s a nice change from cockroach infested trains and hard beds along the southern circuit.

Anyway to catch everyone up, read on above….

Kerala: aka 'Land of Coconuts'... and horrible staring

While planning my trip to India, Cochin in the state of Kerala, was to be one of the highlights of my southern loop. I couldn't wait to arrive in the city made up of islands on the shores of the Lakshadweep Sea. I googled the images of Cochin and fell in love with the lazy sunsets, fishing nets, ritual theatre shots, and most importantly, the backwaters. Arriving in Cochin, however, everything changed. Cochin wound up being a love-hate point of my trip so far and a big test of my backpacker endurance.

Brian, Laurie, and I arrived in the evening to a city of closed shops and restaurants with nowhere to be found to eat or drink anything. Poor Laurie had trouble using her credit card and was down to her last 50 rupees or so and each new street we turned onto looked more desolate, dark, and forbidding than the last. Eventually, her visa obliged her with funds, and we did find a restaurant that was open (turns out that because of Eid, a lot of the usual haunts were shut early).

So passed our first night in Kerala. The next morning, though, things brightened and we embarked on a full day backwaters experience that took us onto a houseboat in the morning-- sailing around the rivers and island villages south of Cochin-- and then onto smaller canoe-like boats in the afternoon-- penetrating the tiny canals inaccessible to the larger houseboats. The experience was magical. for the first time since leaving the UK, there was silence. The sound of water gently lapping against the hull of the boat and the occassional kingfisher in the trees flapping off to another branch was all that interrupted the silence and that was a-ok with me! On the backwaters tour we met a group of people, some of whom were non-resident Indians from the US and a couple of whom live in Bangalore (or Bengalooru, Jon). This was fortuitous as it was nice to talk to someone from the home continent and also really great for asking all those nagging questions about Indian culture tht had crept up along the way. Example: when asking a yes-or-no question to an Indian here, the usual response isn't a shake or a nod of the head, but more of a rocking motion where the head is kept facing straight but the head tilts alternatingly from side to side. We had no idea what that meant, "Is this the bus for Cochin?" *tilt, tilt*; "Is this dish spicy?" *tilt, tilt*; "Do you have a single room available?" *TILT, frickin, TILT*. Anyway... our lovely new indian friends explained that it means ok or yes.

That evening we joined joined force with our new friends to head onto the island of Fort Cochin (the more expensive and touristy part of Cochin, versus the mainland, Ernakulam, where we were staying and where prices are low and tourists are more scarce). We took the RS5 ferry just as the sun was setting and made our way to the chinese fishing nets to get some fresh fish. Sree, one of the group, procured some great fish from the mongers at the proper market price (invaluable, since we probably would have been ripped off otherwise) and we took it to a little fry shack where they cook it for you. SO GOOD! I'm not even sure what kind of fish it was, but it was white and then fried in garlic and some sort of masala spices and served with lemon. As it was, this was just the entree part of our meal. Our group headed back to Ernakulam and checked out the popular restaurant 'Fry's' for a proper Keralan culinary exerience. Our hosts ordered up an array of Keralan dishes for us to try (the things the NRI's missed most after moving to the states) and we feasted on someting called appam-- a flat, moist, rice pancakey thing that you dip into various dishes, like chana masala or curries or whatever. We also tried another dish (don't remember the name) that involved a coconutty rice roll thingy that you eat as rice with the same curry or masala dishes as the appam. The appam was FABULOUS, the roll thingy, not so much-- but... nothing ventured, nothing gained.

The next day, Brian and Laurie departed for some time in Goa and I stuck around Cochin to check out Fort Cocin a bit more. I wound up making friends with the new guests that took on Brian and Laurie's room, a Scottish couple, Elizabeth and Kevin. We made plans to meet up in the evening for a ritual theatre performance of the traditional art form of Kathakali, and I made my way to Fort Cochin for the day.

To be honest, Fort Cochin proved to be a big let down for me. It was jam packed with the staring category of people-- actually, it was jam packed with the selling-stuff people too. I have never felt less like a traveller and more like a walking dollar bill. I literally had people following me, practically chasing me with wares and it was exhausting. The staring and photo-snapping was incessant too. I understand that I look different from the 1 billion people in India, but to follow me round and take photos, or to just stare unmercilessly, keeping me under 24/7 surveillance for every move i make, is just plain rude i my books. Some people will come up and ask for a photo, and I appreciate that they ask. But then, if I say no, they just keep on focussing the camera, and I've had to obstruct their view of me on more than one occasion (Am currently considering going burqa-style as an experiment in evading the photo snapping..... thoughts?). I even met a group of male students who wanted me to give them my dead father's ring "so we can remember you", even after I had said that it had belonged to my father who was deceased. Pfft!

Anyway, the staring, photos, and incessant selling put me in the foulest mood and really put me off of Cochin (especially after reading about how laid back it supposedly was). I showered away the rage and proceeded to meet Elizabeth and Kevin for the show. The show was fascinaing, if a little short and simple. We arrived in time to see the performer applying his bright makeup (the dancer takes on the likeness of a god and acts out stories from the great Hindu epics in an intricate full-body sign-language-- very cool concept!). Normally these performances last all night and are composed of many performers. Our show only featured one man depicting one story.. a bit disappointing, but worthwhile nonetheless.

So ended Cochin... at 2:30AM the following morning I woke up, headed out and caught a 4:30 train to Kanyakumari.... the southernmost tip of the subcontinent where the Bay of Bengal, Indian Ocean, and Arabian Sea meet. Kanyakumari has proven to be the highlight of my trip so far, and by a huge margin.... but getting there involved another epic adventure and test of my endurance. More on that next time...

Thanks for reading, guys!!

Chilling, quite literally, in Ooty

After a remarkably gorgeous 5 hour bus ride around hairpin curves and rain-forest-esque vegetation, I made it to the hill station town of Ooty. The town is a popular Indian-tourist destination, not so many foreigners.

I checked myself into the dormitory of the local YWCA and immediately encountered 3 new friends, Bobbi, Naomi, and Laura, all from England, sitting in the ice-cold parlour. The YWCA was built back in the 20s or 30s and had a certain pre-war charm, the big open parlor, being one such feature.

When I got there, Bobbi, Naomi, and Laura were debating their next move to check out Ooty. In their Lonely Planet guide was listed a strange little attraction called a the Thread Garden. Described as a 'miracle' and the 'first ever in the world', it supposedly took 50 workers 12 years to construct it. We had no idea what a thread garden actually was, but clearly, with an intro like that, we had to check it out! So we packed our 4 bodies into one tight little auto-rickshaw and departed to learn the mysteries of the thread garden of Ooty. The best way to describe this place is a fake flower emporium. it was indoors and set around cutesy little garden paths and looked like a regular flower garden except everything-- from the petals to the leaves and stems- was constructed and finished with embroidery thread. The effect was adorable, but not quite the miracle we were expecting. If it weren't for the 80x zoom on my camera, i would not have been able to see any of the thread craftsmanship. For 10 rupees entry, it was still a fabulous bargain for such a bizarre attraction.

Next we partook of afternoon tea at the Mysore Maharaja's summer palace which is now a very posh guesthouse. the grounds were fabulous and we had to be carted around from the main building to the tea garden on a golf cart. there was an ornate ballroom and beautiful old black and white photos of palace times at the turn of the century. The brits and I enjoyed a round of tea (and hot chocolate for me!) and biscuits while in our backpacker grubby attire in the guesthouse's restaurant where the staff were better dressed and mannered than we could ever hope to be while travelling. It was a great little taste of posh living for an afternoon.

The next day I took a day tour of the surrounding area and was the love single person on a bus filled exclusively with couples-- or so i thought. I met an American guy and French girl, Brian and Laurie, who are travelling for 10 months around Asia and frequently masquerade as a married couple to avoid the incomprehension of local custom of the concept of travel buddies. We saw a waterfall, a forest reserve and a wildlife sanctuary on the tour and discovered that we were headed for the same next port of call so we decided to join forces to make our way into the state of Kerala to soak up the coastal fishing city of Cochin and the atmospheric backwaters immediately south.

To get from Ooty to Cochin, however, I would have to face death on the bus ride down out of the mountains. It took about 3 hours of terrifying hairpin turns and near collisions on the tiny mountain roads while trying to tune out a 200 decibel Bollywood film playing on the bus' TV. The conductor took a liking to me and sat me at the front of the bus to show his fondness-- Biggest mistake ever. At the front I had a head-on view of every single near-miss and new hairpin turn. With every acceleration and careening turn, I could picture the rickety bus rolling down the mountain and immediately wished I had taken out a life insurance policy. Near-death aside, the scenery was absolutely stunning- the stuff of travel brochures and national geographic specials, but things were so precarious i didn't want to extricate my camera. Luckily we made it to flat plains and smoother roads but then got held up in a town with a mob of people praying as it was Eid and every single Muslim man and boy was out at the town mosque. We arrived just as prayers were finishing and so everyone was flowing out of the grounds of the mosque and it basically looked like Wellington St on Canada Day after the fireworks- minus the drinking and debauchery. Helpless to drive further we had to sit in the sun for 30 minutes til the crowds dissipated and then finally moved on. Brian, Laurie, and I finally made it to Cochin after a full day's bus travel and thus began a couple of days in Kerala. More next time...

Mysore : "Do you like Pina Coladas? And getting caught in the rain?"

I started my Southern Indian Adventure in Mysore, a city with a glorious palace and market. People there-- and, I would learn, all over the place-- generally fell into two categories: the ones that stared at me constantly but never said a word, and the ones who chatted me up simply to con me into shopping at a store that would pay them comssion, or to take their rickshaw, bring them to Canada, etc.

It was tough going for the first days. Life was lonely and the only other westerners I saw appeared to be the swanky luxury travellers. I checked into a hotel recomended by ye olde Rough Guide and described as a backpacker's haunt.... alas, not a single backpacker. I was alone. Luckily, Mysore has a gorgeous and compact little city centre with a big clocktower, the Maharaja's palace, and the big market. I walked everywhere and took photos most of the time. I sampled a restaurant that served its meals on banana leaves and had my first proper indian chicken biryani-- heaven!

My first night in Mysore was spent sipping fresh juices-- pineapple being a staple-- and exploring the city under a gathering thunderstorm. The lightshow was superb. I stood for a while trying to wave away hawkers and rickshaw drivers looking for fares and just admired the brilliant flashes of intense national-geographic caliber lightning set against the clocktower and Maharaja's Palace while not a single drop of rain fell. Then suddenly, apocalypse. Torrents of rain tore through the city and every last sane Indian sought cover. Meanwhile, I took the opportunity to walk leisurely and un-hassled through the streets around the centre, getting soaked and protecting my camera from a watery death, but all the time rejoicing in the freedom from people trying to sell me something. It was the perfect 15 minutes in Mysore.

After a couple more solitary days, I moved on to the hill station town of Ooty. No, Ooty is not it's real name, but I can't spell the long form, so just google it..... More on Ooty in the next installment of 'Sepahi on the Move'.

"Eagle has landed"

I'm here!!

I arrived in the wee hours of the morning at the Mumbai airport to the stifling humidity and constant noise of Bombay. Hiral's dad was waiting as planned and he dutifully whisked me off to their lovely flat where I met Hiral's mom and tried to down the overwhelming amount of juice and sweets they plied me with. Then came sweet, sweet repose-- sleeping in until 1pm to recover from all the travel. And recover I did. The journey to Istanbul was a terrifying one, involving some severe turbulence, a 45 degree rolling jolt to one side and then another as the pilot over-corrected, and then a sickening, spiraling nosedive for about 4 eternal seconds - in which time, the nice Iraqi gentleman beside me said "relax!". I grabbed the seat in front of me and watched while my life flashed before my eyes... On the second flight, from Istanbul to Mumbai, things went a lot more smoothly. The plane was half empty, the in-flight service was nonstop and very friendly (I downed about of a litre of that cherry juice, Frances), and the seats could easily have been from the first class of any other carrier.

My first day in Mumbai began the way my previous night had ended- with persistent overstuffing by Hiral's parents. I woke up to a full lunch prepared by Purvi, her mom. Puri, aloo gobi, daal, pickled carrot thingies, and little bhaji crunchy thingies were served until I could eat no more. Then we went out on a driving tour of the city. I got to walk around the Gateway of India area, took a boat cruise around the seafront, and saw the World Trade Centre Mumbai buildings (they've got their own twin towers, albeit not as striking as the NY ones used to be) and the Taj hotel-- still being repaired folowing the attacks last November. Then we took a ride around the stock exchange and financial district where Hiral's dad, Kirit, works and Mumbai University where Hiral studied. We rounded out the afternoon with a sunset pass down Marine drive overlooking the Arabian Sea, a look at the Oberoi hotel, and dinner at Cream Centre- a vegetarian haunt with a global reputation for chana masala (my favourite-- although theirs wasn't as good as Hiral's... which is making me seriously consider her idea of us opening a restaurant)

This morning I woke up a 3am in order to get up and out to the airport for a flight to Bangalore followed by a bus ride to the city of Mysore. The city is smaller than Mumbai but no less humid and crowded and lively. It harbours a Raj-era palace and a famous market that I'll be taking in tomorrow.

So far, India is making a great impression on me. I came here prepared for Egypt levels of heckling and pestering, but aside from the rickshaw touts, I haven't experienced any harassment or badgering. People are wildly helpful. Moreso following a tip of 50 or 60 rupees, of course. But I'm finding my way and learning to let go of the constant planning and just going with the flow and making decisions on the ground instead of weeks in advance online.

I'll try to post some pictures from the first few days next time.

Ciao!

Mumbai in T-minus 36 hours

This is it. I'm leaving in 24 hours on a flight to Istanbul and then on to Mumbai. The itinerary is still largely a mystery and I'm heading towards a part of the world that even my wildest daydreams didn't think would ever happen so soon.

India has always been a 'someday' destination... you know, "Someday I'll see the Great Wall of China. Someday I'd love to climb Kilimanjaro. Someday it would be awesome to travel India for 2 months..."

Now it's really happening. Now, what?

Right now, the packing is all-consuming. I'm trying to walk that fine line between being prepared for a lot of scenarios and traveling light. Will I need hiking boots or just sandals? Reef shoes? How much toilet paper? How much do I trust the Indian Railways toilet facilities? How do you pack for 2 months in a completely foreign country? How do you pack for a trip that could potentially take you from tropical jungle, to teeming metropolis, to beach paradise, to Himalayan mountain landscapes?

In just over 36 hours I'll be touching down at Chattrapathi Shivaji International Airport, on the lookout for Hiral's dad in the arrivals hall and on my way to their flat in Mumbai. Only a day later, I'm due to depart on a 23-hour train ride to the southern city of Mysore to begin a 10-day trek around the south of India. I have no idea where I'm going precisely, I only have a few blurry goals of things I'd like to do and see. I don't know where I'm staying, none of the trusty accommodation listings in my rough guide have websites or online booking.... Basically, I have no effing clue what I'm getting myself into.

...and I thought finishing my master's would be the tough part.

Stay tuned to see what happens to Sepahi on the move.