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?!?

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.)

The Bangalore Aiport — like all of India — is a series of contradictions. The facility is new and modern and clean, yet doesn’t have the radar that we need to be able to takeoff in fog. We have 50 meters of visibility as we board the flight; we need 550m to allow for takeoff. (And even at 550m visibility, takeoffs and landings are spaced by 5 minutes each for safety — extending our wait.) So our British Airways 747 sits grounded for nearly 2 hours before beginning the 8.5 hour flight to London. The flight itself is typically comfortable British Airways … great service, lots of food, and plenty of space in their Premium Economy class. (Even though they were mostly empty, I never did manage to talk myself into their Club World class, with sleeper beds and many other amenities.)

London is a comedy of errors. Getting into the city on “the tube” is easy. I go direct to West End to get show tickets (first choice: Kevin Spacey’s courtroom drama Inherit the Wind; second: Wicked). I’m told that I need to go direct to the theater, so I jump back on the tube (more like walk up, down and around a bunch of stairs) and find my way to The Old Vic, where Spacey’s show is sold out. I figure out where Wicked is playing, jump back on the tube, and arrive at Victoria Station. I’m lucky: after a bit of walking I find the theater and get a fantastic 7th row seat. But from there I go on a desperate and miserable hunt for a hotel room. (Why book in advance; it’s so much more of an adventure to find one by the seat of your pants!)

I walk forever, it seems, looking for a hotel … any hotel. It’s very cold, my backpack gets heavier and heavier by the moment, and my new shoes are starting to dig badly into my feet. The first and second hotels that I find are full. Walk walk walk. The 3rd has 1 room available, at about $350. Walk walk walk. The 4th starts at $400/night. Walk walk walk. The fifth — bingo! — has an old man in a crappy building with a £40 room (around $75?). But I leave after I’ve filled out paperwork as they tell me it’s cash only — no credit cards. I have no pounds, the musical starts soon, and no ATM is close. Walk walk walk.

The sixth hotel is almost out of rooms, but I get one on the promise to come back later with cash, as again they don’t take credit cards. As I get the key, I’m told that the room is actually in another building … on another block.Walk walk walk. Again. Finally, I climb 3 flights of rickety winding stairs to the worst $120 room I’ve ever seen (and smelled). It’s musty, and as I kick my shoes from my throbbing feet I realize that my socks are somehow, mysteriously getting more and more wet. What?!? Yes, the room is flooded. Seriously.

At this point, I almost don’t care. I ignore the soaked carpet, take a shower, and go see Wicked. It’s amazing — a must see if you haven’t — and I love seeing it with the brilliant London cast. (It’s my first time seeing Wicked. Not only is the musical great, but the story is genius.)

Since it’s Thanksgiving, I try and call home. But it’s too late to find an internet cafe, there’s no phone in my room, and I can’t get my iPhone to connect to any of the networks in London to get service. I can’t even text message — WTF AT&T?. I eat Brazilian chicken with a tasty peri-peri sauce alone for Thanksgiving dinner, and crash out extremely exhausted at 5:30am Bangalore time … in order to awake in 6 hours for the flight home. (London, by the way, is soo expensive. This El Pollo Loco style joint is nearly $20 for chicken, mashed potatoes, and juice.)

In the morning, at the airport I stop at Gordon Ramsey’s “Plane Food” quick restaurant. It’s also horrendously expensive, but I get a nice little “plane picnic” lunch to enjoy on the plane.

The London to Los Angeles leg is easy. I write 30 pages (!) in my notebook (yes, on real paper), since my laptop has long been dead and BA doesn’t actually supply power adapters for the seats that they claim have power. Between naps and movies, I realize that the impact of the trip probably hasn’t fully hit me yet.

India is vast and diverse, and full of contradictions. At one point, I’m hit with the idea that I’ve felt like I was pretending to be wealthy with all of our drivers and support staff and resorts and spending 1,000 rupees here and there like it’s nothing. (The average college grade makes only 10,000Rs/month, I’m told … and we’ve been spending more than that per day.) And then it hits me: we aren’t impostors, faking wealth … we are wealthy, in so many different ways. We live in a clean, safe, (mostly) democratic country, where our “very poor” usually have more than the average person on earth has. I have love in my life, friends, family, an education, talents, and my health. India — the ups & downs, poverty and culture, chaos and order, full of contradictions — has made me realize just how fortunate I am, how wealthy we truly are.

I arrive back just in time for a belated family Thanksgiving … and am more thankful this year than ever for the fortunes blessed upon us. And although the flight carried me home quickly; the memories and interpretation of this trip to India will take much longer.

—

Note: The full photo gallery from India is here, with the post above covered in starting at photo #1685 onward. The other posts on India are here … and the reason why we’re on this trip is the non-profit website we’re creating, Creative Offering.

To read all of the blog entries on India, click here. To contact Jason, visit www.28page.com. To offer your own help to the poor in India, or anywhere in the world, please consider making a Creative Offering at www.creativeoffering.org — coming February 2010.

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.

Again, the coffee is really, really good … and we discover that along with the locally grown coffee, our milk comes from “Bessy,” my name for the local cow wandering the grounds, our local “milk factory.”

We meet with the Ayurvedic doctor who explains much of the theory and philosophy behind Ayurveda, then takes a full history and visual exam of us. In Ayurveda (at least my attempt at an explanation of it) there are 3 natural states:

• Kapha: solids and water
• Pitta: fire
• Vata: air and space

Each has a set of characteristics associated with it, and people are inherently born with predominately one or a combination of these types. According to this doctor, most people are one type … some people are a combination of two … and rarely is one person a balanced mix of all three types.

After our exam, it’s revealed that April is primarily Vata (air & space) and secondarily Pitta (fire) — a Vata-Pitta. I’m Kapha (solids and waters) and secondarily also Pitta — a Kapha-Pitta. Since balance is the key in Ayurveda, it’s very fitting that April and I balance each other out with two opposite traits (Vata vs Kapha), yet at the same time share one in common: Pitta, which is passion or energy. My groundedness balances here airiness, and there are a multitude of characteristics that fit each of us — it’s very interesting.

The best part of it all is that the doc “prescribes” us treatments: lots of massage. I go to mine right away, and it turns out it’s a “synchronized” massage: 2 masseuses rub a fine, soft powder (ground fruit I later discover) in unison. It’s magic, and at times I feel like there is one person with 4 hands, or maybe it’s just magically floating hands. This was greatly needed after the houseboat, travel days and bumpy roads.

Lunch is again fantastic. We take a few classes, and it’s time for my second “treatment.” (Since I have to leave at 4:30am the next day, I squeeze 2 days of treatment into 1.) This time it’s a synchronized hot oil massage — apparently the oil mixed individually based on doctor’s orders. Again, it’s heavenly. April gets her first treatment as I watch the enormous globe of a sun set on my last day in India. April and I “confer” about what we learned today, and life is very, very good.

We sample the Ayurvedagram dinner (yum!), try to get 15 minutes on the hotel internet (connectivity has been practically impossible this trip!), and we “sneak out” of the resort to go into town for a late dinner with Anil and Deepa (our new friends, and developer of the upcoming Creative Offering website that we’re here working on). We end up at Highnote, a Bangalore bar/restaurant that could be anywhere, yet could also only be in India. It’s on the 4th floor, overlooking much of the city. The roof is tile — some with glass insets so we can see the moon. The large windows appearing to flank all 4 sides actually only exist on 1 side — the other 3 are open to the view of Bangalore below. April gets gently pressured into singing with the house guitar player (she’s oddly shy about stuff like that), and sings a beautiful rendition of a Cyndi Lauper tune whose name escapes me. (Time after Time?) She adds another city/country to her long list of performances. We really enjoy the company of our new friends, talking about cultural differences and similarities and the things friends discuss. It’s a perfect cap to a perfect day, not at all tainted by the fact that we have a 30 minute drive back to our hotel and end up packing and repacking all of our luggage until 2am — just a couple of hours before I have to leave for the airport.

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(Note: The full photo gallery from India is here, with the post above covered in photos 1599 – 1675. The other posts on India are here … and the reason why we’re on this trip is the non-profit website we’re creating, Creative Offering.)

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.

We have scrambled eggs (coated by the chef, of course, with fresh Indian pepper) alongside just-squeezed pineapple juice, and heavenly Kerala coffee. April wisely uses the jam and toast along with her stockpile of stomach-safe peanut butter (transported across the ocean in our luggage) to make PB&J lunches. The crew thinks we’re crazy.

We dock by 10:30am — the problem being that our flight is at 8:30pm and we have nowhere to go until then. We add an extra 600 rupees (about $12) to our taxi fare and hire the English-speaking driver as our guide for the day. (As we’d headed out of Bangalore — where everyone speaks English — the local language becomes more and more prevalent, from Kannad to Tamil to Malayalam … and less and less people speak English.) Our driver first takes us to a local bird sanctuary (Kumarakom), where we’re told that the 5 rupee price goes to 45Rs for foreigners, and where, we’re told, there aren’t actually any birds. We skip it, and instead go to a local “curiosity shoppe” to search through cheap trinkets, age-old debris, and hidden treasures. We buy some local wood handicrafts, and find this 1-foot wide by 2-foot tall wood carving that we fall in love with. It’s a man and woman (Shiva and Parvati, apparently) in romantic courtship, handcarved, a light-colored wood, clearly old; in need of mild restoration; and far too big to easily take home. April and I fall in love with it, but it’s clearly impractical, and expensive (4000Rs) compared with all the other 100 rupee trinkets for sale here. We almost don’t get it, but finally give in, figure out how to pack it, and buy it for a negotiated 3200Rs ($65 or so). It turns out — assuming it gets home okay! — that it might be our best purchase ever. Later this day we see a nearly identical piece at a local museum — it’s dated 16th century. And at the airport I see a tiny, handcarved piece priced at 450 … dollars, not rupees … that fit in the palm of my hand. So I figure that paying $65 for a huge, possibly 500-year old beautiful art piece that we love isn’t too bad.

The shopkeeper has never charged a credit card, so I help her out with it — next to an antique sewing machine that is still used, not the only one we’ve seen on our trip. She doesn’t get the idea of me signing the slip, I have to take it away from her, sign it, and shove it back to her just to be honest about it.

We drive the insane roads, stopping as we like. On the roads, we see our normal India sights:

• cars of all shapes and sizes
• dogs, including at times packs of them
• cattle, usually standing in the middle of the road
• goats
• tractors, including one pulling a large trailer full of gas
• scooters, motorcycles, tons of them everywhere, many with a wife and one or two children on them
• bicycles
• pedestrians
• busses, usually driving on the wrong side of the road
• trucks, also often coming to us head on

We see several near head-on collisions amongst all of this. At one point,  a car heads directly into a bus. Before they collide, another car somehow squeezes in from the other direction in a near-perfect 3 way head-on collision. They all manage to stop just in time … but the moment they stop an impatient scooter drives through, somehow weaving between all three. Of course, no one flinches … it’s just a day’s drive in India.

We stop in Vaikom and arguably the oldest Shiva temple in the world, at around 600 years old. (We also find out later that this was a very historically important and fascinating location. For most of the temple’s history “untouchables” weren’t allowed on the roads near the temple. Gandhi, testing his nonviolent movement procedures for the first time, was heavily involved in securing freedom of movement for the untouchables on the roads around this temple.) We pay 1Rp (2 cents) each to store our shoes, and we walk barefoot through the grounds. We realize that our feet aren’t as tough as the locals, and we begin to dance in pain from the sharp stones and our burning feet. We see the local elephant, chained in the corner, eating palm leaves (I knew I’d see one!), and we check out the beautiful altar. We’re massively out of place here, everyone outright staring at us, school boys laughing at our crazy sun dance. It’s fun, though, and we even get a few minutes shopping outside the temple gates down the main city drag. In fact, April finds a sari store that’s affordable. Instead of using them for saris, she just wants the fabric for curtains and coverings in our house. The local shop girls titter at the weird American who only wants plain saris — old lady saris! — and more and more of them come around until she has 11 people “helping” her at one point.

Onward our driver takes us to The Hill Palace in Thripunithura – the official residence of the Kochi royal family. The entry fee goes up 3 separate times (car parking fee, foreigner fee, and camera fee) to a whole 180Rs ($4). There’s a 1.75kg solid gold crown that Vasco de Gama gave the Cochin (Kochi, whatever) royal family; many old wood carvings from local temples (including one that exactly like ours!); a “deer park” where the deer eats a creamsicle, stick & all; and a very random, huge T Rex standing out back. (Of course, we take pictures running from the huge dinosaur like it’s going to eat us, once again making the locals think we’re crazy.) It’s interesting, and the nicest museum that we see on our trip … but I think we’re both a bit jaded by living near the Getty, and having seen the Louvre and other great museums of the world. It seems a bit “local” in comparison.

By midnight we’ve made it through the great Kingfisher Airlines flight and back to Bangalore, and on to our “10 km” trip (i.e., 1.5 hours) to our resort, Ayurvedagram. It looks beautiful, and we look forward to a full day of doing nothing here, our last full day of the trip.

—

(Note: The full photo gallery from India is here, with the post above covered in photos 1283 -1597. The other posts on India are here … and the reason why we’re on this trip is the non-profit website we’re creating, Creative Offering.)

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.)

The owner of the boat comes aboard, talks to us gruffly for 2 minutes, and leaves. There are no schedules, no crew introductions, no safety (ha!) briefings … and we never do figure out the hierarchy of the crew. (They don’t speak English, by the way.) We ask the owner if we can stop in small villages along the way, and he says simply “You have 3 stops.”

Like Kochi, I had various website and travel-writeup based expectations for the Kerala backwaters houseboats. I expected that we’d head up & down narrow inlets (as in Apocalypse Now, without the war), stopping at random quaint villages to mingle with rural Indians, finding fresh-caught fish to be cooked up for dinner. The reality of our 3 stops, though, was:

1. Stop at an unattractive location on the side of the lake for lunch … plus another hour of breaktime/sitting
2. Stop for 5 minutes at a shack/small store where the “villager” offered to sell us sodas, and showed us an enormous prawn from his not-so-cool cooler that he’d sell to us for about 900/rupees per kilo (about $20 for 3 prawns — very expensive when you consider that that was 20% of the cost of our entire tour with our crew of 4). To their disappointment we buy nothing.
3. Stop on the side of the lake to dock for the night.

Yes, it isn’t exactly the romantic village idea that I’d had in mind. Most of the time we are on a big lake, with one small jaunt down a smaller tributary. The scenery, though, is gorgeous: tons of local dugout canoes, men digging up shells, fishing, or using a large pole to push forward. There’s a brightly colorful church (Bethlehem) that’s nearly as wide as the islet that it’s on, accessible only by boat, surrounded by coconut trees. The water is clogged with the floating plants, which adds to the surreal aura of it all.

(even laundry LOOKS great here ... you just don't see the bugs, dirt, nor the smell)

Lest my initial rant sound too negative (and just wait, there’s more), I have to confess that along with the photo opportunities, the freshly prepared meals are also top notch. A whole fish, spiced and grilled, with various side dishes and freshly made bread is our lunch. And later, dinner is fantastic as well.

(Just a few of the mosquitos, early in the night ... you should've seen it by morning -- covered!)

Before dinner, though, we dock next to a rice paddy, tying up to some coconut trees … and the fun begins. As the sun sets, the mosquitos (and multitude of other insects large and small) rise. Soon our boat’s “front deck” is covered with a crawling sea of hell for April. She uses her sari like a burka to cover every part of her body from the bugs — in the 100% humidity and heat. She spritzes herself full of bug spray like the perfume salesgirls at Nordstrom. She cringes, swats, swings, and is generally miserable. We finally create a toxic “dead zone” long enough to watch part of a Tamil film which has been subtitled in English. It’s crazy … some plot about a man cutting off a girl’s hair so that he can arrange his sister to marry out of the village but really cutting off the mom’s hair by accident … all the while bursting out into singing and 80’s dance moves every other scene. It also highlights what radically different cultures we’re in.

Thankfully, mid-movie the crew suggests that we dine in our small and enclosed cabin. It’s hot, stuffy, and smells like mold — which means that comparatively it’s pretty much heaven. At least there aren’t many bugs in there … or so it seems.

(The thought of this makes my mouth water, it was amazing)

Dinner is smaller, with a very tasty bird dish (I think?) of some sort, in a brown, spicy gravy with strong hints of cinnamon and perfectly melded flavors. It’s again served with an Indian bread that’s pretty much exactly a tortilla. (I’m not sure who made them first, probably the Indians, but I really had no idea that there were tortillas in other parts of the world.)

We manage to get the crew to start the generator for a bit to run the A/C, which takes some edge off the heat. And at last, it’s time for bed … safe, clean, cool, wonderful bed. (Yeah, right.) As we lay down on the damp mattresses we realize that bed, it turns out, is a bit less sanitized than we Americans prefer. In fact, there are small, dark bugs crawling on it, which April is sure are bedbugs … or mites? Scabies? Maybe only fleas?! All of the above?!?!? (But since April lived on a cruise ship where they once had a bedbug outbreak, she knows all about how the bugs burrow under people’s skin and are very, very difficult to get rid of.) Add to that the bar that goes across April’s back through the middle of the bed, and the fact that the boat is heeling towards my side of the bed, and you can tell that we’re in for a romantic, well-slept night. With nowhere to go but outside — the haven of millions of mosquitos covering the ceiling — we stay in and scrounge up 2 towels to lay on and kick off the blanket, hoping for the best. We wrap our pillows in whatever clean laundry we can find, and cover ourselves in jackets and other items from our suitcases. Shortly, the A/C kicks off, the temperature soars, and we realize that we can’t even open the window (no screens, more bugs) for fresh air. (The beauty of camping is that you have somewhere to GO, or at least a bug-free tent to sleep in.) April stays up most of the night, aching from the lumpy, bug-ridden, sloping bed, enjoying the hot, grimy, sticky night air in the backwaters of Kerala.

Weeks and years will pass, and I’m sure we’ll look at the photographs and see a beautiful, romantic journey in the backwaters. Please, please remind us of the reality should we ever start to forget.

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(Note: There are many more beautiful photos of the houseboats and the backwaters of Kerala. The full photo gallery from India is here, with the post above covered in photos 0762 – 1468. The other posts on India are here … and the reason why we’re on this trip is the non-profit website we’re creating, Creative Offering.)

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.

We catch a cab for the “half hour” (i.e., 1 hour 20) ride to Kochi. From the guidebooks I’m expecting a quaint European-style village, with beautiful historical sites like new world explorer Vasco de Gama’s church (and formal burial place), and an ancient synagogue. Kochi is, in fact, a very large, industrial fishing city, coated in a grime of dust & smog which has settled everywhere courtesy the torrential downpours and 100% humidity, uncleaned for those same hundreds of years.

We stop at the “Nieman Marcus” of sari shopping, Jayalakshmi Silks. Inside there are dozens of low seats aligned before a runway of sorts, where salesgirls in perfectly pleated saris (or is it sarees?) drape customers with fabric after fabric until the gaggle of family and friends in the seats all like it. Each sari is custom made from the fabric. It’s a fascinating spectacle to watch. For men, I find some amazing Diesel Jeans for $40, but can’t decide if they are real or if I need them, and skip it. Generally, though, their prices are sky high and we don’t get anything. In typical India style, the power goes out. Everyone keeps shopping like nothing happened under the emergency lights; even April doesn’t flinch at all and keeps looking through fabrics.

On our way to Jew Town — the big thing to see in Kochi — we make our driver pull over at a little store. We find amazing deals on fresh, fragrant local spices and also some cool jewelry. We spend a whole $20 on a huge bag full of cool stuff … and later find out that we actually overpaid by about double.

We round a bend and we’re in Jew Town — so named because of the synagogue there, and not for the high prices. We walk up and down a small rainy, tropical, dirty street looking through antiques. One of the stores is epic — the entranceway features a massive chariot, inside are full courtyards from temples, gold swinging chairs, a 100 foot long wood-carved boat, and massive pillars. Another smaller shop is full of the coolest leftover Jewish/Indian detritus I’ve ever seen. There are these “books” written in Tamil which look like a Pantone book — lots of little shoots of bamboo cut thin and flat with a hole in the middle-end, so they can fan out. On each “page” is etched tamil writing. They are supposedly 100 to 300 years old, and are selling from $6 to $50/each … wow.

(Not as things seem ... these two coexist peacefully in India)

(So we saw Jesus riding in the back of a truck in Jewtown, in the most Hindu country on earth. Random.)

We eat at a small shop, having a cake the shopkeepers mother (again, supposedly) made. We eat a very tasty mutton biryani (rice) dish with the very talkative shopkeeper chattering over our shoulder. We glimpse the most run-down looking museum (Dutch House) and then head to Kochi’s famed Chinese fishing nets. The beautiful and glamorous photos you can find online don’t actually do the reality of the place much justice. Just imagine: the smell of rotting, dead fish in 100% humidity. Add to it smog that makes the inside of a volcano look clean. You hear the incessant blaring squawk of thousands of black birds circling overhead and everywhere. Walls are stained from ages of torrential downpours, dirt, graffiti and settled smog. A cow stands in the middle of the park (the children’s park, no less!), irritated at something, swinging her head and swishing her/her tail back & forth. Men try and sell you fish, cats and kittens roam freely, horns honk constantly. This is what you don’t see in the pictures.

But the Chinese fishing net mechanisms themselves are pretty amazing. Big wooden logs, aged by years of day-to-day use and covered in moss, climb way up to support a massive net. A line of them runs down the river, all in a row. The river itself — filled with the invasive and disastrous water hyacinth — runs very quickly and we see boats drifting sideways at a dangerous pace as they try and cross. (Foreshadowing: this is soon to be us.)

I’m a bit hard on Kochi, but the guidebooks paint a pretty picture and the photos online are deceptively rosy. We were disillusioned by what we read online, something that seems quite common in this region.

Finally, the taxi driver that we hired for the day (1500 rupees — about $32) tells us that we need to catch the ferry home. (We came into town the long way, and so didn’t need a ferry to get here.) It’s dark, and we get in line of cars facing backwards towards the small ferry. (It’s about 2.5 times the size of the Balboa Bay Ferry in Newport Beach). When it arrives, we back through the streets of Kochi in a reverse line, and back onto the deck of the ferry along with 10 other cards, around 30 scooters and motorcycles, bicycles, and pedestrians. We’re packed on like sardines. The diesel roars to life (I can see the engine room down the hole on deck next to us), and we pull away in the dark, the pull of the river instantly turning us sideways. Frankly, after hearing the tales of capsizing ferries and all the deaths (there were more than 30 here last year), I’m somewhat freaked out. I’d always wondered why everyone dies in a capsize (just swim!), but now I realize that I’m trapped between cars, and we’d be crushed the moment the ferry even listed heavily.

(April is amused as she finds the smallest frog she's ever seen)

My worries, though, are needless, and soon enough we’re back (well … eventually we arrive … this is India) at the resort for another wood-oven fired, very tasty meal and bed.

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(Note: the full photo gallery from India is here, with the post above covered in photos 0606 – 0761. The other posts on India are here … and the reason why we’re on this trip is the non-profit website we’re creating, Creative Offering.)

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.

(tooth powder -- not toothpaste!)

(tooth powder -- not toothpaste!)

We arrive at an Ayurvedic resort called Kairali. Unfortunately, we arrive so late that we had to call ahead and have dinner (vegetarian only here) left in our room so that we had something to eat. It’s a very expensive resort (more than 12,000 rupees, or about USD$240/night), and we don’t get to use any of the facilities nor get the world-famous Ayurvedic massage and treatment … but the food is good, breakfast even better, and in the end we negotiate the price down to something more reasonable.

(breakfast ... yum!!)

We left Kairali around 9:30 and went (relatively) directly to a small village out in the mountains near Palakkad. The village, we later learned, was 150 people formerly living with not even a roof over their head, simply living in the deeply forested area there. The service organization that we were with (that of Sri Satya Sai Baba, a popular godman often called just “Baba” – more on this later) had built several houses there, was educating the children, and making sure that the Indian government paid some attention to this little group. As we approached after a long drive down a dirt road, we see that all the villages children are standing up the road from the village waiting for us. They are chanting, and as we get out of the car one of the children shyly present my fiancée April with a bundle of flowers, and another does the same for me.

We get out of the car, and as they chant we walk with them for about 1/4 mile up to the village. April is reeling at this point – it was pretty surreal, I have to admit – that a year ago she and I were just beginning to date, and far less than a year ago had decided that we wanted to travel somewhere in the world and help people. And out of the blue, with that desire, somehow I’m blessed with the idea of what I want to do in the world; I get dropped upon me a British Airways ticket anywhere in the world; we stumble upon Anil and his team; and they happen to be absolutely perfect for not only our desire to create the website Creative Offering, but also match our desire to do some real good. And even beyond all that, April and Nirmala (our direct contact with both our web development company and this service organization) are talking about doing the very first Creative Offering between themselves, where April will offer to help out with a song that Nirmala needs done in the United States for this organization. (I guess this means nothing if you don’t understand the concept of Creative Offering: it’s a website to be launched in January 2010 which will allow people to make creative, non-cash offerings to help charities.)

So we follow the children to a small path, and head up a small hill to the center of the “village.” (I probably shouldn’t really call it a village. It’s a house here, and a house there, and a well over there … it’s more of a very, very small rural community.) There’s a large blue tarp spread out over the ground. Everyone takes off their shoes, walks on the dirt, and sits on the tarp. So we take off our shoes, and are escorted to the 3 chairs in front of the tarps, once again the unintentional guests of honor. (In the third, smaller chair is a photo of Baba.) The children greet us, and we are once again presented with a talent show from most of the children in the village: some get up and sign individually, some as groups. Some sing in Malayalam, some in their native tongue. (No clicks, but not so easy to pronounce).  Often they are singing “value songs,” which teach things like “Eyes are for seeing … so you can always see the good in others,” and similar other positive values. Like at the orphanage (did I mention this yesterday?), April teaches them how to sing “Silent Night” (she sings a line, they repeat), which is a pretty amazing moment. They in return teach her part of one of the local songs – which is actually exceptionally difficult at first. The kids are pretty shy with us, as they’ve almost certainly never had a western visitor of any sort. But, like the other village and the orphanage, they warm up to us.

We see very young children with makeup on. (I have to tease April: later she asks Nirmala if this makeup is the kind that’s safe for children, which is somewhat akin to asking an aboriginal if the makeup they are using is the new eco-friendly MaxFactor line.) We see very, very old ladies who probably aren’t really all that old. We get a tour of a house (35,000 rupees – about USD$750 – to build concrete floor, walls, and decent roof) that they built for the village. We see the well – apparently dry the day before it was finished, yet miraculously full the day it was done – that they built in a month, a critical need for this community. The songs and tour are amazing, and we’re honored to be able to hand out pencils, pens, and what’s left of the toys to the kids. We blow bubbles for a while, and then April and I are unexpectedly presented with a number of presents from the Sri Satya Service Organization: our very own framed picture of Baba, as well as several of his books, an invitation to his large birthday event, and some local sweets.

Once again, we feel like we got far more than we gave. We handed out some trinkets, and in return had an amazing presentation and show from the entire village, got to feel good, and received presents in return. It’s odd … in hindsight I wonder what we have actually done to help, if anything, other than to visit them and show them that they matter.  I hope in the end that they too feel they received more than they gave.

After a few hours we leave the hot, humid, muggy day for lunch in Palakkad. (Not without April spotting an unbelievably cute one-week old lamb that a village lady chases down and grabs, handing to April as if it were a gawky dog with really long legs. We get, of course, fantastic “Look Ma, I’m holding a cute baby lamb” photos.) At lunch we have quite possibly the best chicken I’ve ever had, chunks of garlic- and onion-coated chicken (no sauce) that’s a bit crispy on the outside and tender on the inside. (Another aside: I’ve learned that chicken in India is usually purchased alive, thus consumed much more fresh; and also that it’s usually harvested much younger than in the US market, which results in vastly more tender chicken. The difference is apparent.) It’s served with an Indian bread that is almost exactly like tortillas – which is of course a surprise, but very good with the other foods.

(driving over a dam in India)

Overall the food has been quite good. The Indians seem to create these dishes which are all spicy. But some are “hot spicy,” while others are “flavorful spicy”: loaded up with very complex flavors that blend magically together into one integrated, aromatic, mouth-watering combination. Many dishes have cinnamon and other ingredients that we wouldn’t use in the USA, but unless you know the ingredients list and are thinking about it, you’d never know.

At lunch we talk at length about arranged marriages. Both of our friends are in arranged marriages, and whether you’re rural or not, this seems to be the case pretty much everywhere in India. The point is not that a marriage is for the married couple, but that it is really a merging and bringing together of two families. And seen in this light, I begin to understand why it’s important that the families will get along in religion, culture, caste, and commonalities. Divorce, until recently, hasn’t been an option here, and family connections are far more important than in the US. So this “family merger” begins with the parents essentially choosing who you are going to marry. There are even websites – similar to match.com – where Indian parents can match their children.

After lunch we’re invited up to Nirmala’s beautiful apartment where we talk business for a bit. Then we leave in our rented taxi for Cochin (aka Kochi – seriously, names of cities here appear to change at whim) at 5:00 rather than our initially desired 1:30. (To rent a taxi for the 130km trip is about $50, which seems a bit expensive until you realize that we’ve also paid the taxi for his return trip back to the city. So it works out to about $0.30/mile for taxi service, probably under a tenth of what it is back in Los Angeles.)

(random sights on the roads of India)

Once again, it’s a very long and harrowing drive. It’s our first night ride, and we realize that everyone has their higher-than-high beams on. So the right half of the road (the other side – remember, they drive on the left here) is this astoundingly bright lights, whereas the rest of the road is unlit and pitch dark. I get a serious headache from this, and April and I both end up wearing our dark sunglasses (at night) for about 2 hours of the drive.

We do end up with a new running joke, though: our driver, lost, continually pulls to the side of the road. Without preamble, he shouts at the nearest man “Cherai Beach Resort!!” and the locals point their finger and mumble something like “4 kilometers.” We realize that there are no roadsigns, no Mapquest nor Google maps, no Thomas Guide … just your friendly neighborhood guy walking down the side of an overly busy road to point and give directions. Although I’m sure most cosmopolitan Indians would be offended, we end up calling this method of finding your way the “Indian Mapquest.”

We’re ecstatic to finally arrive at the resort and get out of driving hell. The restaurant is still open when we arrive, and they skewer a large chicken coated with mustard spices and put it in a wood-fired kiln (tandoori oven) and cook a very tasty Tandoori Chicken meal for me, and giant grilled prawns for April. I finally get a little internet access, then Day 3 – what feels like Day 30 at this pace – is over.

—

(Note: the full photo gallery from India is here, with the post above covered in photos 0271 – 0605. The other posts on India are here … and the reason why we’re on this trip is the non-profit website we’re creating, Creative Offering.)

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.)

A quick aside on the languages: each state in India has it’s own language (that’s how they divided the states), plus Hindi, plus English. But most of the people we’ve met talk natively to each other in English. I had always assumed that the Indian accent I hear was because they didn’t learn English correctly. The more accurate answer, it seems, is that it’s just like Australian versus American versus The Queen’s English: it’s just Indian English, and that’s just the way they speak it. So Bangalore had one language, the aiport area at Coimbatore (in the state of Tamil Nadu) had another, and finally Palakkad (in the state of Kerala, India) has Malayalam – more on that later.

We take a turn down a small back road and end up at Enventure (our new friend Anil’s technology company and Creative Offering’s web developer) . There’s a great reception, with flowers, tea, banana chips, sweet coconut (fresh coconut that you drink out from a straw), and we shake hands with lots of people and see the great operation. We spend some more time getting to know each other and talk for a long time about the website. I have a realization that what we’re trying to do is essentially create a clearinghouse for all non-cash donations to charity, using people greed to actually encourage them to give more. As we leave, we’re presented with a beautiful piece of local art featuring an elephant.

Speaking of elephant, we were going to go ride an elephant at about this time, but apparently we couldn’t get ahold of the friend who happened to own an elephant, so it was off.

We arrive quite late at the village where we are touring some of the works done by Enventure’s VP, Nirmala, as a part of a large Swami’s organization. A large group of girls are standing outside a very small, humble village in their most beautiful orange fancy dresses, shy, waiting to greet us. They instantly take us to their temple. (The larger temple is under construction – so they inform us that god has moved temporarily to a smaller temple next door while his larger one is out of commission.) We walk a bit in the village, seeing roosters, people hand washing their clothing on the concrete and dirt areas, and as we pass one house we are invited in.

We take off our shoes (a bit of a problem for me since I wore tied tennis shoes), duck our heads, and go into a mud, clay and/or concrete house with thatched roof, about the size of an American bathroom, with a small shrine on the wall, and two plastic chairs. We are the honored guests, and we are motioned to sit in the chairs. They offered April a red paste stick her ring finger in, then to dot her forehead with … a blessing of sorts. We stay for a couple of minutes, hearing rolling claps of thunder and seeing the lightening, hoping that another massive downpour doesn’t come. (April saw it on her first day, and says that it wasn’t raining cats & dogs, it was raining elephants.)

I get my shoes back on, we walk out of the house, and 10 feet later we’re asked into the next house. Cool. I struggle to take my shoes off, go in, and see another house, with grandma and grandpa and some very proud children showing us their neighborhood. We are asked to sit, which we do for a moment, express our appreciation, then leave.

Shoes back on. 10 feet. Another invitation. Little did we know that this would be repeated in 15 or so houses in the village, including one with a fish tank they were very proud of, various goats standing around, all set in a surreal, warm, dark night in India.

We arrive at one final house, where the kids do these amazing local dances for us, which we love. They sing a Christmas tune (which we’ve never heard), there are solo songs, Vedas sung, one boy who even shows us all of his drawings, and this ultra-cute boy in a white cloth garment (likes shorts … only different) who shoves aside a girl who gets in front of him as he dances. I take lots of pictures, of course. Then we hand out a bunch of gifts from the Dollar Store like Santa at an Indian Christmas, and have a hard time saying goodbye to all the kids.

We then head to an orphanage, where 8 boys have been rescued from terrible lifestyles like begging at the train station at 8 years old. They are in a prayer room when we arrive, singing and chanting with fire and incense and elephant gods on the wall, honoring the same Swami whose service organization helps them and the kids we saw earlier. We tour their doctor’s room (with a dentist chair and several old sewing machines), their computer learning room (with an old 386-looking computer to train on), and ultimately end up as guests of honor in a front hall. There’s this 80-year old lady who they found in a ditch. She’s wizened, looking almost exactly like one of those old apple ladies you’d buy at the county fair. She shouts something to April in Mayalam, and everyone starts lauging. Apparently she likes April, as she’s asking April where her earring are; everyone knows that any good Indian girl would be wearing her earrings and bangles and an endearing grandmother would ask if she weren’t.

(a sign we saw in the orphanage ... never so clearly true to us)

They kindly offer us water – which to be honest scares me after all the stomach horror stories we’ve heard. I take a sip to be polite, but then the real challenge comes: a pot full of sugar-flavored rice, a special treat apparently just for us. We are asked to sit as their guests of honor, and metal plates are put down in front of us. Several large scoops are slopped onto the plates, which we can’t possibly not eat. It was like that scene in the Indiana Jones movie where no matter what it was, Indiana told Kate Capshaw “eat it!” because it was more food than they had in a month. So, we ate it, making our own prayers to Swami now that we would be okay afterwards.

We give more gifts to the orphan boys … they are at first very shy, but eventually open up a bit and really enjoy the balls, pencils, pens, Frisbees, and of course the crazy looking fake teeth. Finally we head out, feeling more lucky than ever, feeling like we’ve received far more than we have given from the kids in the villages near Palakkad.

—

(Note: the full photo gallery from India is here, with the post above covered in photos 0047 – 0270. The other posts on India are here … and the reason why we’re on this trip is the non-profit website we’re creating, Creative Offering.)

(Good thing DAD has his helmet on! Note the family of 4 on the motorcycle.)

After a great flight on British Airways down to Bangalore (or Bengaluru, as it’s officially named now), I finally arrive in India. I have to admit, standing in the airport I could’ve been in Mexico or any other tropical airport. The people and outfits look as normal as an afternoon at LAX back home in California.

The body scanner – a big TV hooked up to a video camera, showing everyone as a heat signature like in some crazy video game – was India’s way to catch people with a fever and stop the spread of swine flu. And as a member of one of 3 countries considered infected, we had to be reviewed by medical personnel before being let in.

I zoom through customs (worrying for 20 minutes that one bag was lost) and the driver sent by our web developer whisks me into a world where the red road sign with 6 sides means “honk your horn multiple times before accelerating through intersection” and those little white stripes in the middle of the road mean … well, mean pretty much nothing. Traffic is a jumble of ignored lanes, disregarded traffic signals, constant beep-beeping, passing on the wrong side of the road, and yet it somehow works. (And somehow seems safer than most other places I’ve traveled.)

(street view, Bangalore, India)

The day goes quickly: a long meeting getting to know my new friends in India who are developing Creative Offering, an amazingly fragrant, spicy lunch of perfect northern Indian food, more detail planning for the rest of our trip, and three hours of shopping at what is basically a fabric store. I buy silk beddings as gifts. April nearly buys an Indian wedding dress for our wedding, but instead settles on a stunning blue, super-sparkly custom-fitted Sari. (Actually, it’s not really a Sari, but close. I have no idea what the real name of it is.) The Sair would’ve been $400 or $500 in the States. It was about $100 in Bangalore, with lots of custom tailoring, making sleeves, repositioning decorations, etc included. The wedding dress was 50,000 rupees – about $1,000. It took one person 3 months to make, a unique one-off “haute couture” piece of art … incredible.

I find some traditional men’s clothing – 2 pieces in particular that I loved – but don’t buy anything as we’re short on time. We head out and go to dinner with Anil and his wife and two fellow friends (also members of Entrepreneurs’ Organization, the group I’m in that led me to Anil). The Persian food is good, but having a “normal” dinner with new friends from a radically different culture halfway around the world is the best. We discuss normal things, like arranged marriages, the chicken-raising business, etc. April and I are constantly distracted (and fascinated by) the huge group of bats flitting around just off the balcony we sit on. There are large trees with a hanging white fruit which looks completely fake – like Styrofoam balls. The bats land upside down on the fruit and eat. One gigantic bat (we at first thought it was FOUR bats) lands; he must have been 3 to 5 pounds and about 2-hands tall.

We head back to the hotel around 11pm, and immediately, exhaustedly crash out to the sounds of Bangalore’s beeping background. I can’t believe it’s only been my first day.

(Note: Due to the spotty internet — difficulty finding places to charge computers — you’re getting multiple posts at one time and big delays. But it’s now Saturday night, and all is good.)

(Note 2: the full photo gallery from India is here, with the post above covered in photos 0005 – 0044. The other posts on India are here.)

We land in heavy winds, the 777 more like a ship in large seas than a smooth jumbojet … but the Captain sets it down perfectly, to scattered applause.

My colleagues go on to a morning event, free hotel, and more networking. I’m a bit jealous, as I scheduled a bit too tightly and must stat in the airport for my connecting flight to Bangalore in 5 hours. (The big question is if I can talk my way into the supposedly fab BA Heathrow lounge?)

As I leave the plane I’m surprised to see that the name of this promotional program (Face-to-Face) has been painted on both sides of our aircraft.

British Airways Face to Face Program

The rest of the group goes on to board a coach into town for the speakers, and I go from counter to counter to lounge to lounge, asking about the possibility of using the executive lounge. (It’s huge and beautiful with WiFi and power outlets, food and glorious silence.) But after 4 firm rejections, I am unceremoniously plunged back to the real world: screaming kids, uncomfortable chairs, constant announcements, beeping carts, and zero power outlets. It’s 8am Tuesday (I left at 5am Monday), and I just want to check email, update my dear old Droogies on where I’m at, and sleep. (I figured a little Clockwork Orange reference is appropriate in London.)

Of course, the cell phone dies within seconds. I wander the terminal, looking lost, in search of outlets. (no luck) I feel like I’m in that movie where the guy was trapped in an airport. At last, though, I secure a spot on one of the 5 comfortable couched in Heathrow Terminal 5. (Some planner realy blew it on the comfortable seating — visit Schirpol, guys!) I write, good old pen & paper, this blog entry to clear my mind, and I realize how useful and important Lounge access can be. As I watch the inbound passengers from tripoli — including one woman covered head-to-toe in black, like a religious Darth Vader — I realize I ‘only’ have 6 more hours of waiting, cold, no jacket no toilettries, no one to talk with, no connections to the outside world, no place to leave my stuff, no book, no clock/alarm to make sure I don’t oversleep, and if I leave my couch for food our bio-breaks then I lose my spot.

(the only comfortable couch in Heathrow Terminal 5)

It’s a long, long 6 hours, but lest I sound self-pitying (although I was tired, hungry and bored), I do realize that I’m on a free 21,000 mile trip with the purpose of changing the world a little bit. And it’s all part of the adventure.

British Airways did an amazing job, by the way, of putting together this Face of Opportunity program. I met incredible, inspirational people on our ‘party I the sky.’ I talked to the Captain for 20 minutes about everything from UFOs (he’s a non-believer) to his experiences on the Concorde. I met more Internet gurus than I could count. And I made contacts that will certainly have a huge impact in what I’m doing. And I haven’t even made it to the final destination to handle business there yet.

April is 7 of the 11 hours to London, probably asleep over the north pole right about now, and I’m up in LA sleeping in her old bed, closer to LAX and my 7am flight to Chicago.

Since I haven’t written for so long, I guess a bit of catching up is in order: By blind chance — or more likely divine fate — I met my soulmate about a year ago. (And when I say ’soulmate’. I’m not just trying to be romantic … we are like the same person split at birth and reunited decades later.) In August, after dating a whole 8 months, we realized that there’s no stopping the freight train of fate and got engaged.

Fast-forward a few months, and I become the lucky recipient of a British Airways “Face of Opportunity” promotional ticket anywhere in the world they fly. (Thank you, BA!!)

I chose India in order to develop a website that has been germinating in my mind (purpose: to change the way peoe give to charities an improve 1 million lives and more per year… more later on that.) And, so in just a few hours I begin the trip: first to Chicago (thanks, Crista, for the ride!!), then onto London, another 10.5 hours to Bangalore, and then a domestic flight (Indian domestic, should I be concerned?) to Kerala District, in the south.

I’m tired, but excited, wondering how I’ll weather the 30-something hours in the air, looking forward to working on the website along the way. I’ll post as we have Internet (why does the iPhone believe that word should be capitalized?), maybe even talking my little Luddite into a post here or there also. Next stop … Chicago, and our chartered 747 networking flight.

I’ll try and update the blog as regularly as possible for those followers who are looking for updates … and of course, when I get back I’ll put the pictures here as well. Keep an eye out over the next few weeks for actual updates. Thanks!!

Truth be told … it was good, but not amazing. I enjoyed the different experience of the Kimchi Quesadilla, but I’m not a huge Kimchi fan, and so probably wouldn’t order it again. The tacos were good — quite good — but not sure that they were worth 1.5 hours in line. We also had a desert — for the life of me I couldn’t understand what they called it, but it sounded like a “Roofie Sandwich”. It was more like an Orea outside with a buttery, sweet cream filling on the inside, like a big cookie. I loved it — but my friends Missy and Stacia seemed to think it was just okay. I ordered the burrito to save for tonight, so we’ll see how that is later.

I did enjoy the crowd, and the Kogi staff on the truck was great. It’s definitely worth a try, and even worth waiting … if only for the spectacle of it all. Hopefully they’ll come down again, I’d even wait one more time to try the other dishes on the menu…