So this is the section where we admit that it’s not all rosey and fun out here, we make you guys feel a bit better about being stuck there in the cold and we will fill you in on all our ‘Below Par’ days! (Believe me there are some corkers!!)
It all started with our first (and I think worst so far) Friday 10th November- Kochin. Our celebration of surviving India for a whole month!
After an awful nights sleep, full of nightmares and rediculous things I woke up feeling really pooey and emotional. This didn’t help with the fact that we had to say goodbye to our four friends we’d been travelling with for the previous 2 weeks that morning. I got myself together and me & H headed off for our 9.30am massage- Below Par!
I was asked to strip naked by a girl who could have been no more than 16?! I then had to sit cross legged on a bird poo covered cloth on the floor.(It could have been worse thinking about it now, human poo & cow poo are not uncommon to have to sit on, sit in or swim in in this country!)
She set to massaging me with super thick and stinky olive oil?! Then her friend came in, who looked even younger, and the double act began! One massaged one side of me while the other did the other side. It was awful. One was better than the other so it felt really lopsided, one side got a thorough massage and the other side a gentle rub?! They kept telling me to ‘Relax Madam’. How the hell could I ‘relax madam’ when I had two young girls massaging me all over with gallons of cooking oil?!! It felt so wrong, but I should have left straight away and never let the massage begin. Instead I lay there staring at the clock counting down the minutes. I knew the massage lasted 40 minutes, and I know they don’t give you more for your money here, so I knew I just had to last the 40 mins out. I broke the time down in my mind to smaller blocks so that it felt like it passed more quickly!! I closed my eyes and tried to find a ‘Happy Place!!!’ The end didn’t come soon enough!
I had the longest shower afterwards in the corner of the room there. I used the entire bar of soap up that they gave me! Partly to make myself feel ‘cleaner’ and I had to use so much to cut through the caked on grease!! The shower had a small fabric curtain pulled around it and various men wandered in and out of the room through out the time?! There’s no sense of privacy or personal space in this place! Very relieved it was over, we paid our 500 rupees and got the hell out of there!!
We then had to go and say goodbye to our friends. We decided to make it brief as goodbyes are always emotional and not very nice (although I thought I was well practised at them by now!!) The tea pot was calling our names!! We went and recovered with mugs of tea and death by chocolate cake, which made things look slightly rosier. Deciding we had to cheer up and make the most of the rest of our ‘celebratory day’ we headed off to Ernekelum for our canoe/backwater boat trip- Very Below Par!
A hot, stuffy, very badly driven, one and a half our minibus ride of miserable, unfriendly holidaying Indians later and we arrived at a shack in the middle of no where, where a guy started showing us spice plants and trees!! (we had an experience at a spice farm the week before and never wanted to see a spice plant/tree or farm ever again!!) The poor guy wasn’t to know that though and we tried to make ourselves behave like 25year olds and not 14 year olds having a Kevin moment!!
Eventually we moved onward and clambered into a canoe, 6 of us and set off through the swamp!! I’m not sure had we been in better moods if we would have enjoyed it?! But I was so aware that spending 3hours moving along at 1 mile an hour on swamp water when there are Dengi Fever & Chickigungee Fever around, (both deadly diseases that are spread by mosquitos that breed/live on stagnent water areas) and is a real problem in this area, was not a wise idea!! People had died of these diseases in the weeks previous. And we’d really deliberated about whether or not to even come to this part of India because of it and then we put ourselves in a situation where we’re just asking for trouble!! So I behaved like Kevin all afternoon, ‘huh-ing’ if anyone spoke to me and generally being a pain in the arse!! Finally the end came and we got back in the mini bus! YEAY!!!! Unfortunately it was a herendous journey back to Ernakalum, the heavens opened and it was torrential rain the entire journey and the windows at the front wouldn’t close so it was cold and damp!! By the time we got to Ernakalum it was pitch black, the rain was soooooo heavy and had been going for sooooo long the streets were flooded and so were the sewers that run along the sides of the footpaths!! Nice!! We were worried the ferries would stop running accross to Fort Cochin, where we wre staying, because it was such bad weather. So we ran through the rain and sewage flowing streets to get to the boat jetty?!! By the time we got there we were soaked to the bone! And covered in shit, literally!! We ran for the ferry, which pulled out of the jetty as we reached it!! So we had to stand there soaking, freezing and stinking, until the next boat came! The locals stood and stared at us like we were freaks!! (Mind you, I think anyone anywhere would have stared at us the state we were in!!) So a freezing ferry ride later, that seemed to last for hours during which time we desperately needed the toilet and both discussed the just doing it sitting there in our seats in our clothes!! We were so wet already that no one would even have noticed and it would have warmed us up a little!!
When we got off in Fort Cochin and eventually found a rickshaw (they are never around when you actually need one!! Any other time there are thousands of them and they won’t leave you alone!!) and we asked him to take us home!! On the way we passed ‘Habitat’ a posh tourist shop with guards on the door. The stupid taxi driver asked if we would stop there and have a look around?!! (Er!! Hello!! We are covered from head to toe in all kinds of shit, we stink of poo and we are sooo soaking wet that my clothes and skin have gone seethrough!!)
We kindly declined!
But in hindsight we should have gone in! It would have been sooo funny! It would be the only time we went into a shop in India and didn’t get hassled to buy anything!! The state we were in they wouldn’t have been able to get us out quickly enough!!
Finally back in the comfort of ‘Helen’s House’ we showered (thoroughly!!) and put on some warm clothes whilst laughing about our days events!!(Laughing, this was a good sign!!) Feeling more human again we headed to a new little Italian near by for dinner, a lovely little quaint place where we had a great lasagne, calzone and 2 cups of tetleys tea! Feeling like our day had been saved by a shower, warm clothes and the Italian we headed home! Bumping into an Australian couple on the way that we’d spoken to earlier in the day and we shared our days events with them and bidded them goodnight, laughing that we had recovered our bad day in the end.
Only to find …..
Our guest house, ‘Helen’s House’, had shut up shop for the night!! And we were left standing in the street outside at 11pm at night! (That’s late here by the way, everything shuts at 10pm here so we were actually being rebels!!) I attracted the attention of some local guy in the street and then he got other locals involved and everyone was creating noise and trying to wake up Raju, the guest house owner, with no success, most of the street was now awake though!! We all hammered on the gate for atleast 20 mins with no luck. So I decided to get H to give me a leg up and I climbed over the wall and into the yard. I went up to our balcony but he’d locked the door for the corridor leading to our room!? So I had to go back down and hammer on the door and windows and ring the bell and still no response?!! I was hammering on a window when I heard a slight snoring noise and realised this was the room old Raju was asleep in. So I banged and banged on the window until finally he woke up!!
We were in!! 20mins of shouting hollering , banging and bell ringing and we were in!! We sat and laughed about our day for ages, and vowed never to celebrate our months in India again!!
