Hypertravel with Hardie #12: Western India

Hi all: Welcome to my Hypertravel with Hardie video series, in which we’ll travel the world through my eyes and my pictures, all of which were taken more than ten years ago, in this case. If we usually go around several countries, this time it’ll only be one, India, and only part of that one. Last time we did North India, so this time we’ll do the west. This was all originally part of one continuous trip in the year 2014, which started in Kolkata and went all across north India and Rajasthan before crossing the border from Amritsar to Lahore, Pakistan, in the far Northwest of India. I stayed in Pakistan about a week, meanwhile getting an Afghan visa, but ultimately bailing out due to a lingering cold, in the weather and in my body. I couldn’t talk. I could open my mouth and form the words, but nothing would come out. I got my Afghan visa, though, with plenty of time to enter the country, so I came back to India to weather the winter. Now I’m in Mumbai, and the weather is nice. I like west India, also, so far, at least, it quite a bit different from the North. Because, if the north of India has the high and mighty holier than thou rep for its spiritual traditions of Hinduism, Jainism, and Buddhism, along with the (Aryan) Brahmin caste that conceived them, it’s also to a large degree stuck in that glorious past, and the poverty that it sustains. But Mumbai is maybe not the best measure of that with its mafia and slums that would defy Delhi, but it will get better down the coast. For me the best analogy is that in the north you’ll rarely see a modern supermarket, but in the west, you’ll see plenty, and probably more traditional marketplaces, too, since the north has few of either, believe it or not. What Brits and others would call the CBD, Indians would call the Bazaar, i.e. market, or chowk, stalls lined chock-a-block up and down the street with no design or deliberation, just dedication. Mumbai is something of a mix of the two traditions. It starts off bad, near the airport, with a room without windows, but improves when I move into the center. I only wish that I had read Shantaram before I visited, so that I could’ve compared notes with the manuscript, but now it may be too late, since they’ve apparently black-listed me. We’ll see. I never used Lonely Planet much, and it seemed out-of-date by 2014, even, so I reverted to my transportation hub instincts, and that means the railway station, a vast improvement. From there you’ll quickly find Colaba, which includes the Leopold Cafe, dating from 1871, if you’re so inclined and well-endowed. I’m usually broke, haha, or so it seemed back then. But the weather feels good, if nothing else, and the seaside strolls always make for some smiles, so I enjoyed my stay, next stop Poona. For better or worse, Poona comes to me with excess baggage, as the home of OSHO, who I once knew as Bhagwan Sri Rajneesh back in my Oregon days in the early 80’s, when we both lived there almost simultaneously, albeit in separate neighborhoods of the state. To make a long story short: it wasn’t pretty, and many conflicts and lawsuits ensued, while Rajneesh/OSHO counted the Rolls Royces amid his spiritual splendor. They say his teachings were heavily Tantric, ahem. I’d probably prefer the term Vajrayana. When the dust cleared, Rajneesh high-tailed it out of town with that tail between his legs on a beeline for Poona, after being denied entry to twenty or so other countries. The spiritual center that he established in his five years there still exists there, and elsewhere, with an abundance of adepts long after OSHO’s departure, but not much for the average tourist, for better or worse. In fact it’s almost refreshingly boring. If he transplanted northern wisdom to western circumstance, that would seem to be embodied in the sacred cow(s), which are almost everywhere. Alas and alack, I’m not a disciple. Next stop is Goa. Goa is something of the jewel in the crown of west Indian tourism, or indeed all Indian tourism, above and beyond the spirituality and drugs of the north or the mafia, prostitution and drugs of Mumbai. Because Goa has something infinitely more powerful than all that: alcohol. Quick! Tell the Europeans! But they already know, because they are at the heart of it, the Portuguese here long before any other European foreigners. Indeed, they were not only here, but Indonesia (Timor), China (Macau), Malaysia (Malacca), Thailand (Ayutthaya), the Philippines (Cebu), Taiwan (Formosa), and elsewhere, too. And they not only had wine everywhere they went, but they had tables (mesa), and they had soap (sabao), and some variation of those words is in the native language of almost every language in the region. So, remind the locals of that every time they claim that Europeans smell bad. Goa is a strange member of the Indian group, also, without much in the way of cities, but very much in the persistence of culture. Because, while the Portuguese haven’t been gone for very long, their Europeanness still persists, and all in general harmony with the others. That means good parties, famous throughout the region. But for me, it only gets better the further south you go, because there is still a touch of inauthenticity to Goa that gives me pause, while further south there is none of that, the presence of Syrian Christians altogether a different breed, and era, than that of the Portuguese Christians. That means Kerala, domain of those India fanatics in the serious know, with beaches and cities, in addition to whatever substances you may need to put some spice on your daily omelet. The capital of Kerala is Trivunanthapuram (or something like that) better known to many of us as Trivandrum. Now the city may not mean much to anyone else, but to me it’s famous for its supermarkets, something so rare as to seem illegal up north, anywhere up north. Here they’re de rigueur. And if that fails to inspire you, then go to the beach. There are plenty of them. The first one on my list is Varkala, which may or may not be the best. The state of Kerala, way down south, is where those beach-combing backpackers-in-the-know go when Mumbai leaves them feeling cold and Goa leaves them feeling guilty. Here you're back in the 'real India', at least, both good and bad. The good is that you're actually in a foreign country, not just a tourist colony. The bad, depending on your tastes, is that alcohol once again is a precious commodity. That's no problem for me, but it is for some people. But the worst part is that the banks don't work. You never really know until you enter a country or a province whether your ATM card is going to work or not. But, no luck here. Welcome to India. Power isn’t much better, ditto the Net. The beaches here aren't bad, though; better than Goa, or what I saw there, anyway. And the cliffs are pretty spectacular. That's even something of a focus for the locus of the social scene here, along the little backpackers' 'miracle mile' that meanders along the top of the cliff. Of course, there's rarely a railing there, so caveat viator. There are temples and other sites of religious significance, this being a minor pilgrimage location and all. But the main object of adoration seems to be the sun itself, here fully tropical and without the atmospheric fogs and particulates that plague other areas of India. Here you'll go to the beach to cool off, not to warm up. Here you'll have to ritually douse yourself with cool water after every foray into the sun and humidity, three or four times a day at last count. Might as well wash your clothes at the same time, since they'll already be soaked. Next stop is Alleppey. Alleppey, aka Alapuzzha, doesn't look like much at first glance, another decrepit little city in southern India, hot and humid, funky and fuming. That viewpoint, however, ignores Alleppey's position on the edge of a vast system of inland backwaters that connect much of the region—and also underlie the region's tourist industry. There's even a ferry to neighboring villages and towns. No, the electricity grid and WiFi are no better here than in Varkala, but here you'd expect that. In Varkala, or especially Goa, it seems negligent and downright insulting to the hundreds and thousands of tourists who expect and deserve more and better. After all, many people fly in directly from Europe on pricey flights, expecting a seaside honeymoon, not a sweltering survival course. It's no big deal for me. I don't need to get all romantic with myself; I usually get lucky anyway. So Alleppey is fine—but not enough to hold me. I found a bank to take my ATM card. I got wings. C U in Kochi. Kochi's worth it, maybe not for the beach, though I don't really know, but for the historic city itself, based around the old fort and port. This was an old stronghold for the Portuguese and an entrepot for many over the centuries, including ancient Christian sects and Jews expelled from the Roman burning of the temple at Jerusalem in 70 AD. The fact that it was so easily reachable from the early Roman world even adds fuel to the fire as to whether Jesus himself might not have wintered over here in his formative years, doing something similar to what the Beatles would do some two thousand years later. Add to that reasonable prices and quality of rooms, a power grid that generally stays on and a WiFi that generally stays up, and you've got a pretty nice place to hang. I only wish I'd known sooner. But things like that are hard to predict. And I'm sure there are decent beaches to be had here, too, even if maybe not exactly surfers' paradise. It's not like I'm looking to lie in the sun on a rock somewhere. Nextstop is Kovalam. Kovalam is the kind of place that Lonely Planet writers like to disparage as having sold out to commercial interests long ago, with their chock-a-block cafes and resto--bars and boutiques a la Kuta, while noting how Varkala up the road manages to maintain its wild and rustic more authentic nature. I beg to differ. For one thing, Kovalam ain't that bad. For another thing, Varkala ain't that good. These are basically your two beach options within an hour's ride of the Keralan capital Trivandrum, aka Thiruvananthapuram. True, Kovalam is a fairly homogenized and pasteurized version of an Indian beach town, leaning toward European models and menus, with paved sidewalks and handrails to boot, all clean and neat and ready for biz. Is that such a bad thing? LP makes it sound like Kuta Beach in Bali, sprawling for miles down a previously pristine coast, serving banana pancakes in what were once temples, and drinking wine from monkey skulls. Nothing could be further from the truth. This trip is over. I’ll fly back north and continue to Afghanistan, as already reported. From there I’ll catch a flight back south to Sri Lanka and the Maldives, which will be the next episode that I’ll narrate here.