Travel Log: Days 3 - 5
Day 3: May 15th
There's something strange about my friendship with whatzme. When we are together, we tend to completely forget about any of the maturity we've supposedly developed in the last 10 years. So instead of exploring real Bangalore, seeing the sights and all that, we basically just played video games all day. For lunch, we went to the mall, which basically convinces me that malls are the same everywhere. It was the first time I'd seen such rampant price inflation for such a poor place, though not the last. The prices might have been about reasonable by American standards, but everything here seems to cost less if you know where to look.
After a bit of window shopping, we caught a ride back home, thanking the stars that whatzme knew the way back well so the auto-rickshaw driver couldn't take us the wrong way and inflate his fare. We played Wii games the rest of the afternoon, and packed for my 6th take-off and landing in the course of 4 days.
From the moment we arrived in Cochin, we could feel the humidity like a heavy weight in the air; our clothing was sticking to us and our skin felt kinda pasty. Fortunately it wasn't long before we were speeding through the small towns in that area with Jack and his driver in a customized compact car.
Our driver took us to Swapna's home, where we got to meet her parents. We discovered that her father had gone to school with whatzme's father, some 30 years ago, and that the two had been friends at that time. We suspect that there's some sort of conspiracy going on here to allow the man access to take his revenge on whatzme's father for some long-past transgression out on whatzme himself.
Day 4: May 16th
Bright-eyed and bushy-tailed the next morning, after the first bit of real sleep since I got here (real = ~5 hrs, uninterrupted, thanks to the A/C), we set out with Jack and the driver to the town of Kumily. Kumily is located high in the mountains of Kerala, and provides access to Thekkady and the Periyar Tiger Reserve. Jack hoped we might be able to spot some wild elephants and other wildlife.
The journey itself was quite fascinating. I got my first view of what neighborhoods outside of the cities in India look like. For the first 3-4 hours of the drive, I was totally enthralled by the scenery and just did my impression of a perceptual sponge. The villages looked not entirely unlike those that I saw in Mexico, or even some of the smaller middle-of-nowhere towns I passed through on my USA roadtrip. When we got to the mountains and have to climb some 4000 meters, the only real differences I noticed were that the roads were slightly steeper here than in the Rockies, and all the mountains were completely covered with greenery. We passed through numerous rubber plantations and tea farms, all established by the Brits a hundred or more years ago.
We arrived in Kumily, and Jack immediately set out to work his bargaining magic on the locals. Much to our chagrin, nothing in the area turned out to be as cheap as Jack had originally promised. Kumily is apparently a huge tourist trap, and the locals know they can charge ridiculous prices, as compared to the rest of the country. We eventually found lunch for about 10x what we might have spent elsewhere, and a hotel for about 5x as much. Then, of course, we had to pay our driver a tidy sum. In the end, we figured that we'd spent about 15,000 rupees (~US$375) in the course of 24 hours just to get here.
And then we decided to leave.
Before he left us to go do something that has to do with his upcoming wedding, he tried very hard to sell us on a forest department sponsored tourism package. The options were a ~$19 day hike, a ~$25 boat trip, and the ones he most enthusiastic about: the ~$75 or ~$125 2 or 3 day long hiking trips. We considered it and gave him the same response we've been giving every other vendor who wanted our money too much: "Hmm, that sounds interesting. We'll think about it and let you know when we decide." Left to our own devices, we quickly decided we'd experience the park on the cheap and leave town as soon as we could.
Day 5: May 17th
Again we rose early in the morning. I had woken up at 2:30 in the morning from a dream in which I was telling whatzme what a perfect night's sleep I had just had, and managed to sort of sleep the rest of the night. When we finally got up this time, we tried to get into the reserve in time to get the cheap boat tickets (according to Jack: $1, in reality: $2.50 + a 50 cent charge if you want to bring in a camera). After a nice breakfast at an expensive hotel we'd decided not to stay at the day before, I acknowledged that though I hate getting up early when I'm traveling, I never regret it once I actually start whatever plans caused the lack of sleep. Today was no exception, as it was a beautiful and cool morning, perfect for a long walk in the jungle.
Of course, by the time we'd covered the 6 km to the boat ticket booth, it was too late to buy tickets for the boats that were actually worth going on. This was not really a problem for us. In the past 13 years of our random adventures, whatzme and I have always managed to find ways to have fun without spending money. This time we just wandered around the park, took pictures of monkeys, followed random paths to places we maybe weren't supposed to be going, etc.
When we left the park, we discovered that the entire tourist-trap town surrounding the park was closed due to a strike! While this meant that the roads were far easier to walk down without getting run down by out-of-control auto-rickshaws, it also meant that finding essentials, like food and water, was a bit tougher. Instead we followed random roads out of town and found where the nearby farmland was and later where all the rich folks in the area live. All in all, it was a pleasant day doing basically nothing of any consequence, at the price of basically nothing. When we bought dinner, we paid $2.25 and ate well.
Plans for the next few days:
- catch a bus to Kottayam (saving us maybe 50 bucks on getting back towards Cochin)
- catch a ferry tour across the backwaters to Alapuzzah (saving a further 15 bucks)
- catch a train to Cochin (saving another 5 bucks on travel)
- see whatever might be worth seeing in these three towns