On the search for a Goddess in God's own country.

She. With freshly washed, moist tresses glistening with the shine of coconut oil. Fair in complexion, a pearly white smile adorning her face. A small stroke of sandalwood paste smeared across her forehead and the hint more sandalwood peeping out of her neck. She. The one with the golden bordered ivory coloured blouse and pavada (a long skirt for the uninitiated) or, on those special occasions, if one gets especially lucky  dressed in traditional white saree with the gold border blouse. She. A divine vision!

A vision that has been sighted more often in the recent past. Thanks to e-mail forwards from gratification starved male IT friends seeking divine intervention in their daily mundane routines.

A weekend trip to Kerala beckoned and it had all the likely sighting spots conveniently ticked off. The largest city in Kerala, the famous backwaters, a houseboat ride, an unplanned halt at a toddy shop (maybe not quite the best spot for a goddess to appear), temples and last but not the least - a traditional Malayali Nair wedding. I was quietly confident that this trip to Kerala should help me see the Goddess in all her glory. My trips to Kerala in the more recent past has been restricted to jaunts in forests, where one finds it hard to spot tigers and other animals. Forget goddesses.

The search started off on an auspicious enough note - Ambalapuzha Temple. The temple had enough and more to keep a tourist interested. Traditional architecture and truck loads of legends and myths associated with it. A poet who changed the course of Malayalam literature and culture.  A legendary Payasam, which suppposedly - as most of these legends tend to be - tasted a lot better and cost a lot lesser when my parents were my age. Nothing tastes better than nostalgia.

The temple even has a rather auspicious annual food fight. One of those days many years back, the lord decided to leave his sanctum and start serving food to the people in the dining hall of the temple. When someone spotted the God (a version of Krishna) serving he started chasing him. This led to much chaos in the dining hall and in order to keep that memory alive they decided to have an annual food fight. (Watch from 1:50 of the video below to see what I mean)

Note to self - Make sure to try to come to the temple in the night the next time around. The view of the temple from across the temple tank is brilliant. The vision of the temple's reflection on the water body, all lit up with oil wicks, should be a sight worth seeing.

Temple visit check. No divine sightings. No complaints. There has to be a goddess in the backwaters. A mermaid to attract the tourists. There has to be. Right? Wrong. What there is though is houseboats. A whole bloody lot of them. I am certain that the below image has been photo-shopped brilliantly and the 10 other boats have been removed with studied expertise!

But the area is beautiful. Allepey-Kuttanad-Cochin, the entire stretch of backwaters is well, for the lack of a better word, beautiful! National Geographic, I am fairly certain, has better coverage given to the backwaters of Kerala so i just decide to continue my search for my goddess. But the boat man decides to halt at a small little Devi temple instead and I get this sneaky suspicion that the boat man is a cynical mind reader!

The Devi in the temple has got herself a great view of the backwaters and her back is to a sprawling cultivation of paddy. Such agriculture, I am told, is extremely hard given the excess water and its saline content. The native Malayali, proud of his literate self, mentions in pride that such agriculture is a rarity in the world and its only in Netherlands one would see its likes.

Note to self - check out more than just the agriculture if  you ever happen to go to Holland!

The houseboat ride comes with traditional Kerala cuisine. Fish curry and Kappa, Karimeen Porichathu, Avial, red rice, chicken curry and a whole lot more. But we still weren't satiated and this idyllic toddy shop beckoned. The shop, or 'shaapu' as the native speaker refers to it, has a picture perfect location. The toddy tastes like a sweet lassi gone bad but the food that accompanies it is as fresh as fresh can be. Mussels stir fried with an extraordinarily generous amount of red chilli powder, coconut and shallots. Prawns that are so fresh that you can taste the happiness that they felt while crawling around in the depths of the backwaters an hour back. In god's own country, the non-vegetarian's idea of heaven is just a toddy shop away.

Weddings could and should be filled with goddesses. But that only happens when the wedding is not happening in your family. Which, in my humble opinion, is a good thing. One wouldn't want to be appreciating (or ogling, call it what you may) the divine beauty of some distant cousin you last saw as a 7 year old in pink frocks some 15 years back.

The rest of the trip was time spent with family and it struck me that the entire itinerary was wrong. The next time I am in Kerala the trip should begin with an extensive and exhaustive lunch at a toddy shop!

Wayanad's wiles - 1

We begin at the beginning... but the beginning is not at the start of my five day trip to Wayanad's forests... the beginning refers to those days of watching Disney's Jungle Book.. and singing 'The bare necessities'.. I wanted to be Mowgli.. growing up with the wolves.. something needed to be done about my primal urge..so i set off with four other buddies from college ( Ja, Dil, Sreeps and Vish) to Wayanad, a district in the North East of Kerala with two beautiful forest ranges - Muthanga and Tholpetty

When are the unreserved compartments getting cushions

We had to get down at Kozhikode (Calicut) as thats the nearest railhead to Wayanad. ( Actually from Chennai the shortest route as far as time is concerned is to go to Mysore and take a bus from Mysore to Sultan Bathery) Owing to timing probs we decided to board the Mangalore Mail starting at 20:15 from Chennai Central on 8th March, Thursday..and as we are college guys, real men..that and the fact that it was cheaper meant that we travelled unreserved.. cost us 150 Rs... the journey to Kozhikode is twelve hours and involved a lot of butt ache.. when we getting those cushions here Mr. Yadav ?? We reached Kozhikode at 08:45 on 9th March, Friday. Took care of our morning ablutions at the waiting room in the station, which to my pleasant surprise is stunningly clean...

Breakfast at the Hotel Divar consisted of 10 Parottas, 4 Pathiris (rice chapathi), Beef Liver curry, Chicken curry, Egg Masala, Fish Curry and Tea and cost us a 'grand' total of 163 Rs.. Food is definitely cheap in Kerala.. We didnt get the chance to explore Kozhikode's famous Mithai street as we had to rush to board a bus to Wayanad.

Schumacher Wannabes

There was no direct bus to Sultan Bathery (which is a major town in Wayanad district and the one closest to Muthanga forest range - our destination) at that time so we took a bus to Kalpetta, the capital of Wayanad.. got into the bus at 11:00.

Wayanad is a hilly district and the roads have many hair pin bends and long slopes..so you kinda expect a journey to be slow.. but trust me when I put this on writing - Kerala bus drivers are fast, recklessly fast.. Dil wanted to puke at most hair pins.. and once we got out at Kalpetta at 12:30, he made us promise him we are not going back to Kozhikode...which luckily for him we never were planning to in the first place.. Kozhikode-Kalpetta bus trip cost us 180 bucks (56 Rs per person) for a journey of 107 kms, Mysore to Kalpetta distance is 140 kms..another bus to Sultan Bathery cost us 105 Rs (21 per head).. Tipu Sultan had built a fort to peserve his arms here and hence the name Sultan Bathery, which in English i assume is Sultan's Battery...halted at a relative's huose for a sumptuous lunch and left to Muthanga

Sultan Bathery to Muthanga bus will cost a person 6 bucks but as the next bus was a one hour wait and we wanted to reach before dark. Hence, we took a jeep to Muthanga Forest checkpost that cost us 170 Rs...Jeep driver's name is Ajit Ph no. - 94473 - 57191.

Watch tower or watch house ?

We reached Muthanga by five and the forest officer at Muthanga told us to parcel some food and gave us a guide..a nice guide but very silent type, not a conversationist..would only answer the questions posed to him.. and some of the answers weren't too convincing... We were allocated the Marghata Watch Tower and as we drove in to the guest house (jeep costing 200 Rs.) we passed a sexy watch tower next to a watering hole and got sight of our first elephant.. the first wildlife we spotted was the Malabar Giant Squirrel, a crimson coloured thing which is the size of a well fed domestic cat... anyways, coming back to the watch tower.. the watch tower next to the watering hole had some problem with the trench around it and that wasnt where we were headed...
Just when we started to enter the deeper forests we suddenly came to a halt..and in front of us was a two storey house... something out of a housing board colony..there was an Adivasi couple living in a hut besides the house and there was a trench around the house.. this was the Marghata Watch tower... there was no watering hole around the tower... suddenly our prospects of spotting Sher Khan seemed bleak.. and it gets even bleaker when our guide says that he has spotted a tiger only four times in his 13 years of work in this range.. hmmm... the guide is even more disappointed when he learns that he is spending the night with 5 college students who are teetotallers (atleast most of the time they are)

Wayanad's wiles - 2

Is that Orion or Scorpio ?

I have never seen so many stars in the sky...the moon was not out..may be that's why..but trust me there was not a single speck of sky that was not occupied by stars...time was 19:00 hrs and not a single nocturnal creature was spotted... we heard a lot of noises... one bird had a particularly entertaining sound which resembled a villain's or comedian's laugh... the city bred boys that we are, the only bird sounds that we can recognise are that of crows, cuckoos and hens..to make matters worse, our guide didnt seem to know the name either..

Early dinner at 21:00 hrs..Parotta and Beef and we climb upto the balcony and hit the sack...Early start tomorrow morning... the cold and the sudden and bright appearance of the moon at approximately 23:00 hrs plus all the forest sounds ensures that the sleep is a disturbed one... The moon is so bright and its appearance is so sudden that Dil wonders who put the lights on ?

These pug marks are real

Trekking starts at 06:30.. Vish and Sreeps are keen to show us the pug mark that they spotted when they woke up ( those two had risen earlier and thanks to their joblessness..made up a pug mark to fool us ).. we played along and started our trek only to be confronted by real pug marks...leading into the jungles.. His Majesty was certainly there somewhere...

We trekked upto the Trijunction which is the meeting point between Kerala, Karnataka and Tamil Nadu and we also got to climb up the watch tower we had seen the previous evening..but no elephants to be found
Samba deers, Langurs, Spotted deers and suddenly....

Our forest guide, after an hour, takes us off the beaten track and into the jungles. The group automatically becomes quiet, thanks to hunger and a sense of danger. The guide mistakes a wild boar to be a bear, but quickly corrects his mistake when the boar starts to run.. we are dissapointed to say the least, but the sight of a majestic Samba deer with antlers proves to be some consolation although his majesty still eludes us...
We continue walking through the forest trail with our guide leading us through the way when we suddenly come across a pile of elepant dung..and then a fresher pile and then the freshest pile and then suddenly there he is.. a lone tusker.. Lone tuskers are the most dangerous animals in the forest... Elephants are very group minded.. a lone tusker means that the particular Elephant is an outcast, which means it has a bad behaviour..having heard the stories of numerous deaths at the hands of tuskers from my uncles, i am a bit apprehensive of going any closer. The guide seems to be more apprehensive and takes a u-turn as soon as we finish taking our snaps... We continue walking for another hour and we reach the dormitory by 10:30.

4000 B.C. ! you gotta be kidding me

Briyani for luch from Hotel Jubilee at Bathery costs us 60 Rs per plate.. big mistake ordering a heavy lunch cos our next destination is Edakkal caves, 12 kms from Bathery..bus cost 14 Rs... containing prehistoric paintings...4000 B.C is how old the paintings are...

God bless the shopkeeper who tells us to leave our bags at his shop before climbing... oh what a climb.. the five of us are not weaklings...but we struggle through the climb to reach the top..splendid view and super caves.. history around us and the comforting thought of a downhill climb... we wind up by 17:30 hours and get on a bus to Mananthavady ( 27 Rs from Bathery for a journey of 48 kms)

Wayanad's wiles - 3

To Alaska or bust

Alaska tourist home is the place we decide to halt fr the night at Mananthavady and we experience super hospitality.. sexy double bedrooms for 100 bucks and 40 Rs. for an extra bed.. the rooms are cheap as the bathrooms are common.. but to our joy we find out that the bathrooms are common but they have locks that ensure that one bathroom is allocated with a separate bathroom.. in other words our rooms have bathrooms but they are not attached.. worth the money trust me.

Lovely settings but a 'small' temple

Kerala for all its communism is small in its outlook.. a case in point seen at the Thirunelly temple (32 kms from Mananthavady and 27.50 Rs. bus ticket, time 07:00 on 11th morning when we start).. the temple is set in pristine surroundings with hills surrounding it and a river running besides it..but non hindus are not allowed.. Ja, inspite of me insisting him to come, decides not to enter...being the principled man that he is, I am not surprised...Dil is upset that he has to remove his t-shirt cos he has put extra powder in his armpits..fortunately for him and unfortunately for the rest of us..there are no traces of the powder.. the temple is a small one and has nothing particularly appealing in an architecture point of view but for its location...definite must see just for its settings..
After breakfast, we head for Tholpetty Forest range.. 7 kms from Thirunelly...bus journey costs a total of 13 bucks

I have been going to forests for 34 years and I am yet to spot a tiger

Thats what Mr. Narayanan says..56 year old guy sitting next to me in the bus... he is heading towards Nagarhole sanctuary but decides to join us and come to Tholpetty.. he warns us that the chances of spotting wildlife are very low.. 50 % are the chances is what the forester at Tholpetty warns us.. are you sure you wanna go in ? Well, we have come all the way from Chennai, so even if we dont get to spot any animals, the forest is reason enough for us to go in...jeep costs 300 Rs, guide costs 100 Rs and entrance fee of 80 Rs.... Ideal time to spot animals is in the mornings and the evenings.. the forest range is closed in the afternoons.. the written entries show that most of the tiger spottings are between 17:00 hrs to 18:30 hrs.. we got to go in the afternoon...thanks to influence..ahem ahem.

We get to spot a few deers and langurs but no tigers or elephants or bears... the forests at Tholpetty are definitely more denser than the ones at Muthanga... Lovely watch tower besides a watering hole too..which is sure to guarantee sightings...sure hope to stay overnight here next time around... But Narayan insists that Goa is the place where youngsters like us should be headed.

Wow, these are islands ?

We stop of at Kattikulam for lunch and regret every minute of it.. After lunch we take an auto to Kuruva Dweep ( 17 kms from Mananthavady and 8 kms from Kattikulam).. the auto guy charges us 50 Rs.. which we realise is a really meagre amount.. as the 8 kms are made up of roads which are sure suspension killers...
The autos are have more value for money than the buses.. the government buses have fancy ass technology for ticket delivery with the conductors equipped with electronic ticket machines...the machines are two years old..but the buses seem like they are thirty years old.. absolute torture.. we try to talk our auto guy into waiting.. but he tells us with a smiling face that there is a lot to see in Kuruva Dweep so it will take us time
Entrance fee to Kuruva Dweep is 25 Rs per head and is well worth the money... One can easily spend a day here...Its an uninhabited island and you have to take 2 ferries across. most steps and seats and benches are made of bamboo.. lovely they are.. sexy lakes surround the islands.. really a sight to see

Bye Bye Mananthavady

Night bus to Kannur starts from 01:00 hs from the Gandhi Park bus stand is the info we get when we call up Bathery bus stand (Ph - 04936 - 220217) The bus starts from Ooty and comes via Bathery to Mananathavady..
We get enough time to vist Pazhassi Raja's tomb... which is in Manathavady itself.. a nice 15 minute stroll from Alaska Tourist home.. nice little place nestled on a table top hill.. giving a nice view of the surroundings.. as the tomb is being spruced up we dont get much in the kind of information on Pazhassi Raja apart from him being a king who fought against the Brits and got killed in battle

Pack our bags after dinner at Garden Restaurant ( 180 Rs.. after carefully interrogating the waiter and extracting the information that the cheapest ice cream is 10 Rs, which is a 50 ml cup of Vanilla..Sreeps decides to order a Casatta ice cream...which the rest of us promptly gorge on) and say bye to the friendly reception attendant at Alaska...

Board the bus to Kannur... 56 Rs. for a very uncomfortable journey.. reack Kannur at 04:30 hrs.. bus to Kasargod starts at 05:00 hrs...

Wayanad's wiles - 4

Kasaragod is not Wayanad

Its a whole new district..the northernmost in Kerala.. Mangalore is a mere 51 kms from Kasaragod.. why are we here ? To see Bekal fort... the fort where Arvind Swamy serenades to Manisha Koirala in the film Bombay. Its 16 kms from Kasaragod... We initially decided to leave our bags in the cloak room at the railway station..but to our disappointment we discover that there is no cloak room at the station.. as our train is only at 22:15 p.m and we have reached Kasaragod at 08:30.. we are left with no option but to check into a lodge... we check into Airlines Hotel or something to that effect... by far the worst place i have stayed in.. lousy staff and lousier service.. buggers charged us extra for a triple bedroom with one bed broken and useless.. lousy place... especially coming after our wonderful stay at Alaska Tourist home in Mananthavady..

Thankfully Bekal Fort eased our irritation.. its a stunning sight but the weather proved to be a dampener.. bloody hot.. True lovers should serenade in the heat..not in the rain like the way Arvind Swamy does in the movie. In spite of the heat, the fort is truly stunning and we found ourselves a spot under a tree where we stopped off for a couple of hours before returning to Kasaragod.

The guys then went shopping for some traditional banana chips at Kasaragod town.. and Sreeps, Vish and Dil bought some Padhmukam which is this herbal powder to which boiled water is added and strained to get this flavoured water which is, i think, supposed to be healthy. All the restaurants we ate in served us water hot and pinkish brown in colour - thanks to this powder. All the restaurants had crockery as well..china flourished.

After dinner we checked out from the hotel unceremoniously and boarded the West Coast express to Chennai at 22:15.

Five days of super fun

In case you get a chance to go to Wayanad..take a nice torch with you.. this is useful in the forest as well as in the towns which go to sleep by 21:00 hrs.. lack of streetlights give it an eerie ambience.. torches will be useful
The fun factor of the trip is the responsibility of forest officer Sujith (Trivandrum range), A.K.Gopalan (Muthanga Range), Guide Rajeevan, Thangu aunty, a couple of auto drivers, Abhay from Alaska tourist home ( i think thats his name)... A big debt of gratitude to them all.

If you are from Chennai...do take the opportunity to go on a auto rickshaw ride.. its tough to find decent auto drivers in Chennai.. tough not to find decent ones in the north of Kerala..

Trip in brief(s) -

8th March 20:15 Board Mangalore mail from Chennai to Kozhikode, 9th March 08:30 Reach Kozhikode, 9th March 17:00 Reach Muthanga Forest, 10th March 14:00 Visit Edakkal caves, 10th March 20:00 Reach Mananthavady, 11th March 08:30 visit Thirunelly temples, 11th March 12:00 visit Tholpetty forest Range, 11th March 15:30 visit Kuruva Dweep, 12th March 01:00 start for Kannur, 12th March 05:00 start for Kasargod from Kannur, 12th March 08:30 reach Kasargod, 12th March 12:00 visit Bekal fort, 12th March 22:15 start for Chennai

Trip cost us 1600 Rs per person.. mainly for the bus rides..food was well worth the price paid... but like the credit card ad says.. the trip : 1600 Rs., the novel experience : priceless

Mallu Mallu Bong Bong

When one reads a book or a news story, the most important criterion is credibility..what credibility does so and so have to write such and such a thing.

With no flourish or deceit, I will strip down to the bare minimum and tell you point blank that this post is about Kerala and West Bengal... and the lovely coincidences that these two states seem to have in the sensibilities and culture of its indigenous people (read malayalis and bengalis)

But what credibility do i have... Well, i was born in Tamil Nadu to two Malayalis... and because of the situational circumstances of the nursing home that i was born in and the business interests of my dad ensuring that i would be raised in the coastal confines of Chennai, I like to think I have a certain objectivity in my opinion of Keralites... and my profound admiration of the beauty of Bengali women takes care of the bong side of things.. so without further delay..we go to the coincidences

1. Eating Habits - Fondness for rice is a trait that Bengalis share with all South Indians and not Keralites alone..agreed..but the craving for seafood - the fish and prawns and the strong dedication they have towards mustard oil (Bengali) and coconut oil (Keralites) is something that sets their cooking apart.

2. Madness for Football - Pujas at Kalighat temples.. night shows of football matches in Mallapuram theatres... Goa and the North East have a more recent history towards the beautiful game comapred to WB and Kerala.

3. Communism - West Bengal has the longest running democratically elected Communist Government in the World.. Kerala had the first democratically elected communist government in the World ( prompting CIA to have a dedicated file for Kerala in the 1950's)

4. Simple elegance of the Sarees worn by the women - A Bengali wearing a white Bengal cotton saree with a red border and a red blouse with the red tikka on her forehead stands out in a crowd.. So does the white mundu and kasavu ensemble of the mallu lady... although i have to admit my preference for the bong beauty as far as looks alone is concerned.

5. Arts - Mallu and Bong music has a melodic quality to it..not for them the fast beats and the guitar riffs.. They also have a strong literary tradition in their regional language..Rabindranath Tagore is the most famous of the lot for obvious reasons..but one cant look past Bandopadhyay, M.T Vasudevan Nair, Vijayan, Shankaran Pillai....the list is long and endless...if only they weren't lost in translation.. Garcia Marquez and the like owe a lot to their translators.. pity post independent India does not have great translators for all the regional literature (not bengali or malayali alone)

6. Parochial tendencies - Mallus and Bongs have this snobbishness and arrogance that I think arises from their fierce sense of regional pride ( that sometimes is misplaced and mistaken )

I find these similarities uncanny enough to write a post on them... just hope some Bengali babe is reading...