So I’m browsing the Google News pages, and I see something about a festival in Kerala in India — where we’re recently visited (here, and here). It’s an interesting article by the BBC about a women’s festival there with 3 million attendees. The paragraph that utterly shocked me was this one:

It is an elaborate logistical feat: almost 3,000 police, 600 of them women, were on duty around the clock. Two hundred priests positioned themselves at different points to sprinkle holy water on the pongala. Fifty portable toilets were also provided.

Now, I don’t know about you … but if I were the Beeb I might be a little surprised that 3 million people had a whole 50 portable toilets to use. I did a little math. That’s one toilet per 60,000 people. That means that if you use the toilet only once per day, you have approximately 1.5 seconds to use it to keep it on schedule. And did they really call 50 toilets “an elaborate logistical feat”? Seriously?!?

I started this blog for my friends and family to look at and now, somehow or another, I get about 14,000 pageviews a month. Thanks for looking.

You’ll notice that I don’t post often — usually only when I have something interesting to say (unlike today). I try and post photos of travel, and these get picked up by google pretty often. For some reason, Gum Wall Seattle is searched all the time, as is The Bachelors Ball (1, 2), and LOTS of hits on how to create the effect from that movie 300 (here, and here). I oddly see quite a few searches for “punk violin” — which seems very random, but comes up almost daily. Other popular searches cover Honduras and El Salvador, the Honey Cone, and the houseboats in India (and here).

Apparently Tripbase liked some of the travel photos, and sent me a pretty graphic for the site. Thanks, Tripbase.

Tripbase Travel Photography Award

Thursday, 26 Nov 2009 – Four AM of Thanksgiving 2009 comes fast, as two bell boys and a driver are there to get me on my way. I leave fiancée April sleeping at our resort (Ayurvedagram in Bangalore) as she has a different flight than I. The ride to the airport is the most harrowing yet: a dense fog obscures pedestrians and the small taxis, which we dodge at high speed while avoiding oncoming headlights that suddenly appear out of the fog, sometimes on the wrong side. (Remember, Indians drive on the British side of the road, so it just feels doubly-wrong to an American.) Read the rest of this entry »

The amazing Wednesday spent in India at an Ayurvedic resort was coincidentally one year from the day that April and I first kissed. As I ponder the last year, I can only be astounded at how different my life is in such a short time period: Read the rest of this entry »

Wednesday, 25 Nov 2009 — Ayurveda is a 3,500 year-old holistic health system developed in Kerala – where we’ve been visiting for the last week before our return to Bangalore. The name of our resort, Ayurvedagram, means “Ayurveda Village,” and we’re excited to slow down after our harried travel schedule. (We were actually supposed to go see the amazing Mysore palaces, but we couldn’t possibly spend another 3 hours each way — meaning much more in reality — to go.) We arrived late the prior night, and in the daylight we can see how truly beautiful this resort is. It’s about 15 traditional, historic Kerala buildings which were disassembled, transported, and reassembled here, set in gorgeous, lush grounds. The Kerala houses are what I’d imagine traditional Japanese houses look like — with open-air courtyards of various types, shingled roofs, and sparse yet beautiful interiors. Our room is set on a gorgeous courtyard with a large double-door, and a traditional latch secured with padlock and skeleton key (!). April is up early enough for Yoga, and I join her a bit later for a traditional, very tasty Kerala-style breakfast. All the meals here are vegetarian, and if I could eat vegetarian like this at home I’d be far less likely to eat meat.

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Tuesday, 24 Nov 2009 — The sunrise over our Kerala houseboat brings a new day, and soon the night is just a memory. As “Disneyland natives” we have to keep reminding ourselves that this isn’t the jungle cruise, it’s so beautiful. I take a ton of sunrise photos over the rice paddies, and as we putter across the lake April comes out of our cabin, tired but only a little grumpy. (I, of course, have to mercilessly tease her over the memory of her in her mock-burka, spritzing DEET everywhere, and doing the mosquito dance.) We see dozens of fishermen in their long, wooden canoes as we glide over a vast lake. There’s no horizon due to the light morning fog, and thousands of clumps of water hyacinth look like unreal, upside-down clouds, the water dotted further with hundreds of black birds awaiting fish breakfast. I can’t imagine another place like it, so oddly peaceful in the middle of this crowded, bustling country.

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The journey to our houseboat in Kerala — seemingly like all journeys in India — was quoted as 1 hour … and delivered as 3. (Breakfast at the resort, by the way, was marsala omelette, fresh squeezed pineapple and watermelon juices, various vegetables in sauces, and the heavenly local coffee, which is so good it tastes closer to hot chocolate than coffee.) The houseboat is around 50 feet long, with a thatched roof, decently sized bedroom, a crew room, a kitchen, and functional western bathroom.

(Have I mentioned bathrooms yet? April has come to prefer the holes in the ground, as they are much easier to use when wearing a sari or other traditional clothing. Even in the nicest homes there often isn’t toilet paper — this isn’t because it’s not affordable, it’s because there is some system with (a) a hose and squirter, (b) a large bucket, and (c) a small bucket. I actually never figure out how this combination of items works together, and I’m too scared to experiment for fearing of spraying water over everything and still not making any progress. Okay, I googled it, and in pictures here is the hilariously done answer. Now I know.)

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It’s Sunday (22 Nov 2009), and April and I have finally got a decent night’s sleep as we awaken in our room literally over the sea, in Cherai Beach Resort near Kochi. The A/C in our room works, thank god, which dries out there air a bit (feels like 140% humidity outside) and keeps it cool. Finally.

Kochi — or Cochin, I can’t figure out which is the more correct name but I personally like calling it Cochin because it reminds me of the font — is in the deep south of India on the west coast, along the Arabian Sea. And the Cherai Beach Resort where we are is on a small strip of land between the ocean and the backwaters — a cross between a lake, river and swamp.

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Palakkhad, India, Saturday 21 Nov 2009 – From the orphanage (see prior post) we leave on our “30 minute” drive to our resort. We have now taken to calling the estimated travel times “IST” – for “Indian Standard Time.” It’s been our experience that you can add from 50% to 300% to any travel time quoted. And here again, it took an hour or more to get to our resort under driving conditions that would make most American drivers howl in terror – a recurring theme (the hours of driving) throughout the rest of our travels. Read the rest of this entry »

India, 20 Nov 2009 (Friday) – Once again we are under-slept and travel weary as we get up at 6am to be out of our 2-bedroom apartment in Bangalore by 7am. We head the harrowing roads back to the airport, through security lines segregated by sex, and onto a Kingfisher Airlines turboprop to Coimbatore airport. Kingfisher – owned by man who owns the large Indian beer company – is actually a very nice airline, with recorded announcements in this alluring, sexy voice, and a pretty good vegetarian meal served on such a very short trip. (You hardly get peanuts on most of the US airlines, even on 4 hour flights.) The inflight magazine is a trip … I’ll have to take some pix later an upload them.

After landing, a big red tractor pulls in our luggage, and our new driver gets us to Palakkad, south India. (It’s pronounced Palghad, which I later learns how it is pronounced in the language of this region.)

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