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| Kochin - Kerala, India |
India, which over the past two weeks has been beckoning Kelly and I closer with a seductive curling index finger, has just bitchslapped us. Man, what happened? Three days ago I was relaxing seaside with a Kingfisher (beer), and since then I have been subjected to...well, let me fill in some details.
In my last post I was dreading our journey on the night train...turns out if was justified. The train was about an hour late, and we were an hour early, so right off the bat we're waiting at the deserted station for two hours - until about midnight or so. One silver lining that absolutely shocked me was there was a station employee there that had a printout of everyone that was supposed to be boarding the train. "One person missing," he said after checking everyone else against the list. Unreal! I could not believe the organizational chasm that had just been leapt, from decentralized blocks of tickets for sale at different offices, now to a centralized list, which they paid someone to print out and double check against passenger turnout! I was dumbfounded. It should be noted I was also dumbfounded by a green flying creature at the train station that I can best describe as either tinkerbell or a flying frog, it looked equally like both.
As the train stopped for all of 10 seconds, Kelly an I each hoisted ourselves aboard, and were quickly directed to our sleeping quarters. We had been told "3rd AC", our class level, consisted of rooms of 8 people. Each "room" turned out to be a subsection of an endless corridor spanning the entire train car. No doors, just a gigantic room configured so that you could call each cramped set of 8 beds a "room". I had never seen a triple bunk bed before, but that's what 6 of the 8 beds were. Having now seen it, an Indian sleeper train car is instantly out as an option for anyone over 50, as I doubt they could reach the varying levels of bunk bed without injuring one of the body's major ligaments - there are no ladders to any level, instead you must grab a handle at the top and hoist yourself up.
The train posed some particular problems for me. Noise, you say? No, the endless assault of snoring, mumbling passersby, and train personnel shouting one room away (this an actual separate room) was easily tempered by earplugs. Perhaps bugs, then? No, in fact the several cockroaches I saw crawling in and around my bunk before I got in it left me alone once I hopped on. No, for me, the first major problem was that my bunk was two feet shorter than I am, with walls on both sides preventing my favorite workaround, the toe overhang. So I slept with my legs bent on top of each other (the bunks are very slim as well, as you might guess). This is okay at first, but over the course of a night the cramps will set in, and they did. This wasn't even the most pressing problem, however. I had taken a motion sickness pill to be on the safe side, but within 15 minutes of being on that train, I already had a headache. After 30 minutes it had begun synchronizing itself with my stomach in the way only motion sickness can. Just as the first few tell-tale burps were sounded, I was getting nervous. I was really trapped. The train was a dark rollercoaster, bouncing and shaking constantly, and there I was squeezed into a top bunk, preparing myself for a sleepless night of puking into whatever I decided was the least offensive place. Desperately trying to avoid that fate, I gobbled down a second motion sickness pill, and reversed my sleeping position so my feet were now pointing towards the direction of travel. After turning around I instantly began to feel better. It could have been the pills, but the speed of recovery reminded me that even in sleep, anytime I am traveling "backwards", I am screwed. Suffice it to say I am now convinced that sometimes a change in position is required to stop people being sick to their stomachs. Mr. President, are you listening?
The rest of the train ride was peanuts after the night portion, but the total ride lasted 16 hours, since it was also late an additional hour arriving. It was as long and as grueling as any international flight. We did meet some very nice Indians from outside Bombay that told us how to travel the south like a local. Oh, to be able to fit in like a local.
We got a nice hotel room once we arrived. Everything should have been rosy, but it wasn't. Neither Kelly nor I like Kochin, Kerala, where we are right now. Kerala is referred to as "God's Country." So far, I call bullshit. I'm hopeful it will get nicer. I think maybe what happened is this: we arrived in Bombay and were all enthused for India. Every annoyance and inconvenience, as with any new relationship, was perceived as endearing. But currently we're encountering the same irritating beggars, sellers, and filth, except now it's horribly annoying. Did the weather get hotter? Maybe that's it. I'm not sure.
Today we saw the Chinese fisherman, and got to pull a huge net out of the water with an ancient-looking wooden lever. We saw Jewtown, which wins for best name. Desperate store owners lined the path to the synagogue, which itself was, for me, forgettable. Then we got into an auto-rickshah. Because we are in "God's Country", he had no idea where we were going, and kept getting lost. We ate lunch with the locals for the first time. I didn't realize we weren't eating with the locals before, but now that I've done it, I see the difference. First off, they were eating with their hands. The waiter spoke no English, so my questions about the dishes (the ones that weren't "finished") were met with his best estimation of their shape and size using his hands. I didn't know that was what he was doing until I ordered "Paper Roast" and was served an aerated piece of bread the size of a small to medium shark. We have been stared at since we arrived in India, but here I was getting extra penetrating stares as I ate my yeastophilic lunch like I would a giant subway sandwich.
Kerala is definitely different from Bombay. The food here is good, but so far is a far cry from the exquisite food we had in Bombay (or Goa for that matter). Also, no matter what I order, it is "finished". "Finished" is the word Indians use when they have run out of something on the menu, or perhaps they never started it. Every single time we sit down to eat, we are presented a menu to peruse, with no information about what may or may not be available. And I kid you not, at every meal we have eaten here so far, the (first) thing I try to order is "finished". One time is fine, but after a few times, I'm wondering why they hand out a huge menu, when it ends up coming down to them pointing to the small list of things actually available during the current meal.
Also, everybody operates slowly around here. Bombay had its annoyances, but most everything was quick. We bought magazines today, and the guy ringing them up took I would estimate 5-7 minutes. I thought it was just a fluke. Tonight's dinner took an hour to arrive after ordering, and when we asked for the bill, the girl sat down and proceeded to write poetry...oh, whoops, that's the bill she just spent 5 minutes of calligraphy on.
It is for these reasons I feel we have been tricked. I thought Bombay would be the worst of the worst, and the rest of India would be a cakewalk. While Bombay most likely presents India at its most intense and frenetic, it shelters its visitors from the true annoyances of India, which I am learning take place once the intensity dies down. It is the anguish suffered when your eagerly anticipated meal is "finished"; the annoyance of the heat and mosquitoes as your server takes the time to hand-craft your bill as if it were a love letter; the dread felt when an overnight train ride feels like a taste (albeit a tiny, tiny taste) of the underbelly of a slave ship.
It's really not all that bad, and I'm sure it will get better. But it sure is fun to rant.
