Conclusion

All of a sudden the end is nearing fast, too fast. I'm flying home on Monday so it's time to write up some conclusions.
First of all the going away party was very cool: 15 elephants in procession at the temple and a lot of drummers for over 2 hours!
What I'll definitely miss from India will be the food. It is so easy to get tasty food ready made just about everywhere. Of course the good thing about going back to Holland is the better coffee without the sugar, something we could get in Australia but hardly in India; all the best coffee is for export and the culture is more about tea anyway.
The pace of things is nice and slow, all the buses and trains hardly ever make a top speed of over 60 km/hr and on average maybe 35.
India continues to surprise: I'd never thought changing a tire on a bus because the thread is completely gone would be done in the middle of its route but that's India! Luckily it takes just 10 minutes as the the wheel with the new tire is already there.

Anyway, Goa was great, as was Mudumalai, Mysore, Hampi and Kerala too.

That leaves the north of India for a next trip in the hopefully not too distant future...

Tea and spices

After we spent an afternoon being canoed around the backwaters of Alleppey we head for the Cardamom Hills. Here is the spice garden of India. In our guest house we get directions to hike to a biological spice farm halfway up on the hill behind the village. It is set in the forest, all the different spice plants grow in between the trees. Harry, the German farmer, doesn't believe in mono-culture, where they clear the land and plant only one kind of crop. He's a very warm host, fixing us a cup of tea with a mixture of his home grown spices. Today he has time to talk with us, as his workers didn't show up this morning. It often happens on mondays, he says. We get a tour around all the different plants and Harry explains how the spices grow, are harvested and prepared for usage. He had to find out about biological spice farming all by himself. In India all the farms use crazy amounts of pesticides and fertilizer. And even after many years working for him, his workers still don't understand why he just doesn't spray. We enjoy listening to this passionate man and walk on to the top of the hill and down passed the tribal village with a bag full of beautiful biological spices. (www.naturalshakti.com)

Textile Candy Store

We are in Trivandrum (Thiruvananthapuram), the capitol of the southern state Kerala. The city has nothing of the allure of a capitol city, just your normal Indian chaos. We follow MG Road, as most main roads are called in every city or town in tribute to Mahatma Gandhi. Some luxurious western looking shops and offices are interspersed between little dark workshops and local produce stalls. Then we pass a big building spitting out saree clad ladies laden with big orange plastic bags; 'Vishnuram Textiles' I read. I gotta go in there! Inside there are four floors stacked to the ceiling with all different textiles; lunghis, dothis, sarees in silk, cotton or mixed, house hold textiles, too much to name. First we go downstairs where we select some beautiful checked lunghis, after we go to the first floor where they sell the silk sarees. I'm like a little kid in a candy store, overwhelmed by all these colours and gold embroideries. Harry is joking that he'll order a sea container for me, but I keep my cool and only select one spice coloured saree. We still have some more travelling to do and have to carry everything we buy on our backs.

Doing India Goan style

Arriving in Goa we learn fast that tourism is real business here. Everything is not just a little bit more expensive, but at least two or three times more. Even a little ice cream selling guy is shamelessly asking 50 rupees for a 5 rupee pop. Well you can always try, but it doesn't feel good. Most of the time we're still too soft, but we do learn to haggle. We make a stop in the capitol Panjim and the happening beach spot, Anjuna, before heading to Morjim where I will follow a course in Ayur Yogic massage. I'm happy to see that Morjim is still not overdeveloped tourist wise. That is because at one end of the beach some sea turtles come and nest and they are protected. Hopefully they will keep coming, but their numbers are dwindling fast. This year only 5 came to nest so far.
We find a cozy little cottage some hundred meters behind the beach and at walking distance to the massage school. Every morning after a breakfast with sea view, I walk to my course while Harry starts working on our porch. The course is great. We get taught in a wonderful airy space, my fellow students are a nice divers group of people and the course is from the start good hands-on; massaging and being massaged for 12 days in a row. Real Goan style, we rent a scooter to zip between the villages in the afternoons and evenings. Spending time at the beaches, markets and great restaurants. In our favourite restaurant a whole group of guys from Sikkim, one of the northern states, is working. They really know how to cook and we ask them to prepare lobster for us one evening; delicious.
The last day of the course we have to bring a model and of course Harry is my lucky one and gets the whole treatment I learned. The day after, I treat myself to an Indian rope massage done by a cool British chick in Anjuna. It's a great experience to feel her slide her feet all over me, while she's balancing on a rope above me. That's another technique I would like to learn some other time/ trip.