Houseboating and the Indian Restaurant Game in Kollam

This weekend I went on my first Projects Abroad sponsored trip. This
meant that our train, bus, hotel, touring, and restaurant
accomodations were all organized for us, leaving me with only a
balance to pay for the weekend and a fun experience with a bunch of
new people to friend on Facebook.

There were ups and downs to traveling with the group. Having private
transportation that took care of our permissions to enter the state of
Kerala and got us through the mountains in one piece was awesome.
These two days were the longest that I've gone without trying to
figure out directions to an obscure place that I didn't know how to
pronounce and trying not to get ripped off by a rickshaw driver, and
that part was great. However, the fact that I never really had any say
as to when and where we were going was frustrating. Also, trying to
get 40 people in sync to do anything or go anywhere is just
impossible. Bathroom breaks on the drive take 20+ minutes and then
more once people discover the shops nearby. I personally am a fan of
the "hold it until it hurts / until we get there" philosophy, and on
any drive less than six hours by myself, I tend to get in the car at
home and get out at my destination. Having so many new people around
though gave me a chance to connect with other volunteers placed in and
around Madurai and to hear about other types of placements that people
were doing.

So Friday morning, 30 or so of us met at the Madurai Junction train
station at around 10:30. Victor, a runny, short, balding man from
Projects Abroad was waiting with all of our tickets and directions for
the day. We boarded the four hour train in 2nd class, the lowest class
on Indian trains. For our purposes, it was fine and extremely cost
efficient (25 rupees, or just over 50 cents for four hours on the
train). I sat on one cushioned bench with a very straight, stiff wall
behind it with four people, facing another bench of four people, our
knees very close together. I met some fun new people and a group of 9
of us (five guys, four girls) decided that we would share two double
rooms between us all in order to save money (the rooms are recommended
for three people at most). We all got off the bus at Sengotti, a
little train stop, and boarded two large vans for a four hour drive to
Kollam in the Indian state of Kerala on the west coast. The vans
actually resembled something that I would expect to take on a safari,
which is cool to take a picture of, but we were packed inside like
sardines.

The van/safari bus ride was actually very nice though, driving through
the beautiful countryside past many farms and hills. The temperature
was much more tolerable than the east Indian coast, at around 80
degrees with a nice breeze. Although I had always been warned about
taking any type of transportation through the mountains in India, it
actually wasn't as bad as I expected. Yes, we went around hairpin
turns way too fast in an area where only one car going either
direction could go around the turn at a time, and yes we were driving
on the edge of a cliff with no guardrail, and maybe I've just become
so desensitized to Indian driving or maybe it was because I was in a
backwards facing seat, but I wasn't really too worried the whole trip.
I tried (fairly unsuccessfully) to fall asleep, and stared out the
window a bit, and the four hour trip passed pretty quickly.

Upon arriving at the hotel in Kollam, we quickly realized that three
was about the most that we were going to fit in a room, so we divided
up our original group of five, set our things down and went to dinner.
Our restaurant was another great collaboration of ethnic cuisine. I
chose North Indian over Italian, Chinese, and American food, and was
happy with my eggplant dish that I couldn't pronounce, parotha, and
side of fries. We decided to walk back to the hotel afterwards, since
it was only a fifteen minute walk and we had already been on the van/
bus all day. Upon arriving back at the air conditioned hotel, which
was awesome except the price, we settled in for some World Cup
excitement for the England-Algeria game. It was cool because there
were three people from the UK and a girl from Algeria watching with
us, making it feel like a truly international experience. Somehow I
ended up choosing the roommates who liked to have the crowd where they
lived, so going to bed that night before 2 was out of the question.

Saturday morning, we attempted to have a relaxed breakfast in the
hotel restaurant. One thing about Indian restaurants that I thought at
first was strange but soon realized is very common is bad, poorly
timed service. I don't think I've eaten a meal out where everyone got
to eat at the same time. They tend to bring things in a random order,
one meal, then somebody's dessert, then someone else's meal, then
someone's drink, then another meal ten minutes later, and so on. It's
kind of strange but we all learned quickly to abandon the custom of
waiting for everyone to be served to start eating. Also, most Indian
restaurants won't have everything on the menu available, so you should
have at least three choices ready. That morning, there was no
porridge, only fried eggs, only pineapple juice, and no potatoes
available, which is a pretty significant amount of things for a menu
only twice that long. After determining what extra things they had
charged to our bill or what they had changed the price on from the
listed menu price, we paid and headed out to the house boat that would
be our vessel for the day.

There were two houseboats for our group that now numbered around 40,
both with a covered deck and couches and padded seats, two bedrooms
and bathrooms, and a small galley in the stern. From 10-5, we cruised
the backwaters of Kerala, passing by city, landfills, and eventually
emerging into the jungle. The morning was really relaxed, and people
laid around, read books, chatted quietly. We stopped at a murky bank
on the side or the river and were served lunch (rice, sambahr, curried
okra, beets, and fried bananas and tea for dessert). Some people
jumped of the side of the boat for a swim, but I ventured with a few
people out through the jungle area into a village in the hills. We
came across a group of kids who knew only enough English to inform us
that they loved pens, and we happened to be carrying a few 10 cent
pens that we happily handed over to their enjoyment. We hiked up a
little bit and found a stunning view, overlooking the jungle back down
to the river, and across miles of jungle and river switchbacks to the
mountains on the other side. We were taking pictures in front of the
stunning backdrop, a process that always takes awhile with five people
who all want the picture on their camera, when we realized that we had
been followed by the pen kids. They had just watched us take the
typical "funny picture" that always follows a series of serious ones.
For our funny picture, we decided to do the one where everyone jumps
into the air and we look like we're flying. The kids thought that this
was the greatest thing ever, and next thing we knew we were trying to
coordinate a group of 8 or so of them to do their own jumping
pictures. We encountered an unexpected difficulty with this though,
which we realized after we said "one...two...three!" and took the
first picture and nobody jumped. (Duhhh, these kids don't speak
English). We used our best sign language to communicate it to them,
and eventually got them all in sync, more or less. After some great
pictures with the kids, we headed back down the hill to the boat and
set off back in the direction we came from.

The trip back was significantly more lively than the trip there, with
the fried bananas, beer, chai, and coffee brought out and the totally
out of place Backstreet Boys blaring from the boat's speakers across
the water and into the jungle around us. Once we emerged on the lake
opposite our hotel, the boat was in full-on social mode, with everyone
getting to know some of the new volunteers around us and enjoying the
beautiful day and the breeze as we cruised back to our hotel.

After a few hours, which were intended to be for rest but which we
used to check out the town of Kollam, we all met up for dinner and
went to a nice restaurant on Projects Abroad's tab. A girl in the
group had a birthday, and so the restaurant made a cake. Whether the
cake was made that day or in the last week for that matter was
questionable though, because it actually had a taste and texture that
quite resembled cardboard and I can honestly say that it was probably
the worst, most flavorless cake that I've ever had. Despite the cake
though, it was one of the better dinners I've had in awhile because I
decided to sit with a totally new group of people. I met a 50 year old
woman from England who is working in an orphanage, a woman from Denver
who is working on a farm in preparation for her study to become a
horticulturist, and another woman who just graduated from college in
British Columbia and is preparing for medical studies. It was really
refreshing to talk to new people and get other perspectives and hear
new stories. The woman from Germany described her experience really
well when she recounted the description of India that she had given to
a friend: "it's hot, sticky, dirty, and the most beautiful place all
at the same time". And it really is true. This place is full of the
diamonds in the rough, with beautiful temples hiding beyond a field
full of trash and reeking of urine, the rocky shores of the Bay of
Bengal behind old Indian women begging for money, and amazing juice
squeezed out of moldy-looking stalks of sugar cane by old men with
shriveled hands on the side of the road. I see people wearing more
color on a daily basis than I ever do at home. The mystery of the
jungle and the children in the villages beyond it can be found only by
walking through a reddish mud, swatting past a million mosquitoes on
your way. The horrible smells and wall of humidity that I walked
through when I arrived in the Chennai airport 16 days ago were the
gateway into a place that can only be appreciated by seeing, smelling,
hearing, and tasting all that it has to offer at the same time. The
mountains and hills are an incredibly beautiful contrast to the
landfill of trash on the side of the river in front of them. The
magnitude of everything in India is just impossible to explain, but so
neat to experience.

Back at the hotel, my roommates and the girls would hear no talk of
going to bed early, even though we had all decided to accompany Victor
the next morning at 6 am to the beach for the sunrise. After only four
hours of sleep, it was really kind of like a great payback when I got
to shake them awake, refusing to let them sleep even though I
desperately wanted to myself. The sunrise was kind of anticlimactic,
as we were standing with our backs to the ocean trying to find the sun
in the east through the thick clouds and dense smog. We went back to
the hotel for a nap and time for another frustrating breakfast before
departing at 11. I felt a little bad for the waiter, who I ambushed
many times in trying to place my order. It's kind of this way most
places that I've been, where the waiter takes their time to take your
order (over an hour some places I've been), brings all the meals out
separately, doesn't come back to check if you need anything, which you
usually do because they've forgotten to bring drinks or you didn't get
what you ordered...etc. Then getting the bill once you ask for it can
still take up to an additional 20 minutes, and getting change will
happen only if you remind them multiple times. Not in the mood to play
the Indian restaurant game, I got up so many times to find the waiter
that the only time he actually came to the table was to bring out my
food.

Our return trip felt even longer than the trip we had made to get
there only two days prior. I sat in one of the back-facing seats,
contributing to nausea all the way through the mountains. Much to my
dismay, we stopped three times in those four hours, two bathroom
breaks and one snack break (ughhhh). The train was the same layout,
but for some reason was packed twice as full as the first train trip
there. We got on early so that we had seats, which proved to be a
mixed blessing since standing up to stretch my legs that were pulled
up against my knees would have meant that I would lose my seat to one
of the six or seven sweaty Indian men that were standing where my legs
were supposed be. The aisles were packed, and with the open door
trains, it was a wonder to me that nobody got pushed out. Needless to
say, I was ecstatic to get off the train and so excited to get home
that I didn't bother to do too much negotiating for our rickshaw ride
home (probably overpaying by some obscene amount like 50 cents or
something).

So all in all, it was a fast, fun, and exhausting weekend. I am
starting to go a little crazy becuase I really haven't had time to
myself or a place for myself, luxuries that I miss dearly from home,
for a couple weeks now. I think that it really got to me when there
were ten people sitting on my bed last night, spilling their drinks on
my already questionable single sheet that I was sharing with another
guy from England, and trying to talk to each other over the music
blaring from the speakers next to the bed (turning on music full
volume and then trying to have a converstation and shouting to be
heard over it is something that I just don't get). Tonight, thank
goodness for my own bed, even though Emanuel and I have decided to
replace our A/C with mosquito nets to save money. It's weird to say
this in a country around the world that I've only been in for two
weeks, but it sure feels good to be home.