On the Road

A little more than a week after we arrived in Chennai, it was time for us to get on the road. I left Chennai very excited, and also on a mission to see some real, lively elephants.

I was promised elephants at the first temple we went to (to be shown later), located in Kanchipuram, (just south of Chennai) called either Sri Kacchapeswarar or Kacchabesvara. I was not only promised elephants, but i was promised that an elephant would bonk me on the head with its trunk--as a blessing--if i gave it a rupee (with 42-47 rupees to the dollar, that's a lot of bonking!!). We were told that they only bonk for money, not for food. Hmmm...Indian elephants are very enterprising, I guess.

I was so very excited all day, I couldn't wait to be bonked. But when we got there, horror of horrors, the mahout was absent. It is not safe for elephants to self-supervise around a bunch of small, unpredictable humans, so the elephants were being kept at the back of the temple until the mahout returned. I was very, very sad. There would be no bonking that day. But one day soon....

We left on an overnight train, bound for Ernakulam, a city on the western coast of India, in the state of Kerala (which is also in southern India). It took us about ten hours to get there, so of course we slept in the accomodations afforded to us by India's rail system.

Each alcove is in a T-shape, with 3 bunks of 2 long "beds" (thin, vinyl mattresses, suspended along each long edge of the T). The railway is very kind to its passengers, and gave us all sheets, blankets, and pillows to use for the trip. For what they could do, it was pretty comfortable--not really comfortable, but pretty comfortable. We couldn't really sleep completely through the night, but it gave you the chance to get some rest before reaching your destination.

Upon stepping outside of the Ernakulam station, we were immediately chosen by Johnson, our autorickshaw driver for the next few hours.

Johnson drove us to our hotel in Fort Cochin, which is a small town directly adjacent to Ernakulam. Place names in India can be a bit confusing for those not in the know, because there have been changes from the old, colonial names to new ones approved by the present population. In addition, there are also not always widely agreed upon spellings for names, and this can be seen not only in how the pronounciation of town names vary from person to person, but also on official street signs when you are travelling from place to place. So, in this case, we arrived in Ernakulam/Ernakalam, drove through Cochin/Kochi, and made our very temporary home in Fort Cochin/Fort Kochi.

Fort Cochin is a much smaller, more walkable town than Ernakalum, something that we weren't aware of when we were on our way there. Johnson offered to drive us around Cochin, to be our personal tour guide for the day. His price was reasonable, so we agreed. This would prove to be a mistake.

I'll pause a moment here to tell you a little about rickshaw drivers. In most places we travelled to, Breck and I really stood out, because most non-Indian tourists only go to the north when they travel to India. So usually, we would go for days without seeing other people that looked like they were tourists. I tell you this because most Indians expect that people who have money (i.e. Westerners) do not walk from place to place--they are driven. So, anytime a rickshaw driver saw us walking, he assumed that we needed a ride. It usually took many different varieties of "no" to make them go away (upon which, another driver would pull up and resume where the other guy had left off). An example of one such interaction:

(In this scene, you are walking along to your destination, when a rickshaw pulls up beside you and slows down to your pace)

Driver: Ride?

You: No, thank you.

Driver: Where are you going?

You: I'm walking, thank you. (wanting to be very clear, you throw in some of the little Tamil you know, while giving the so-so hand waggle for "no", with further head bobbing for flourish) Elai. (No, thank you.)

Driver: Only 50 rupees, anywhere!

You: (You continue to bob your head and waggle your hand as politely as possible) No, thank you! Elai! Elai! No, Thank You!

(Driver continues to drive slowly next to you. You stop walking and make steady eye contact with him).

You ): Elai! No! Thank You!

Driver: (looks very confused and halts rickshaw to stare at you)

You: No, thank you! Elai! No, thank you!

Driver: (looks more confused, but pulls away from you to allow the next rickshaw driver to have an opportunity to ask if you want a ride.)

This same scene was repeated many times over the course of our journey. It is very close to the interactions we would have with people who were selling things on the street outside of temples and other places of interest (not people who had stalls or stores, but who sold trinkets and chachke kept on their person), or the few people we met begging for money.

Whether you made a show of interest or not (although eye contact did guarantee you even greater attention), sellers and beggars would follow along at your elbow, telling you about their goods or their plight, and stayed with you until you got to your car or your next destination. If you had access to a car or rickshaw, like we did, they would stand outside of the window, still talking and motioning to you (even if the windows were rolled up), until the engine started and you drove away.

Just as an aside, in my point of view, it seemed better for them to expand their possibilities and not stay so long with one person or group of people--maybe just ask a couple of times and move on. So I'm not really certain about their philosophy, but it must work somehow, or they wouldn't stick with it, I suppose.

So back to "Johnson" our driver. He was the first person we had met who called himself by a name that was so obviously not from his native language--Malayalam, now that we were in Kerala (later, we would see that using a non-Indian name might be handy in Fort Cochin, becase the place was completely lousy with European tourists). Johnson was extremely bouyant and bubbling to have us as his passengers. In fact, at the Ernakulam train station, he had practically shoved two Indian ladies out of the rickshaw line to allow us to get in his vehicle first. Johnson was extra excited, because he is a Christian, and he assumed that we were Christians as well ( I suppose it didn't help that when he asked us if we were Christians, we said yes, to avoid all of extra explaining and hand gestures to say "no, we are actually agnostic, and not really sure of the validity of the whole higher power thing and all...." So fine, for that afternoon, we were Christians.

We stopped by our hotel, The Kapitan, a sweet little place in the center of town. Even though we were rough and tired from our long journey by train, we decided to tough it out, at least until the afternoon, so that we could get the most of our time in Ft. Cochin (were were scheduled to leave for our 2 night trip on a houseboat the next day). So we started out with Johnson.