KERELA - not SRI LANKA
YUP, GOING IN REVERSE ORDER
Shit happens, and I can't be arsed to reverse the whole website - so roll with it please. Train from Madras across to Kerela, east to west, about 400 miles. But you know that if you are following this chronologically, if not you are as confused as I am.
NOT DELIBERATLEY VISITING NON-TOURIST TOWNS - JUST ARE.
Starting our Kerela journey in another one horse, one station town, because this is where the train dumped us, called KOLLAM. Our hotels team (Sara) books us into another top flight LEELA group hotel (apparently a night sleeping on a board in a boxroom on a rattler builds a credit on hotel rooms, who knew?). Not crazy at £80 a night, lovely room, but they have a wedding on the next day, so night two has to be in a villa (shame!) at a less attractive £240 a night, but then the third night back to £80, so it all evens out - does it?? Apparently it does.
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Lovely place. Sea eagles swoop down and sit next to you at the poolside (a first for me, and I've been everywhere). Nice first day doing the square root of fuck all. An old army phrase meaning just relaxing. Day two move to the new quarters, a massive residence, an old historic building uprooted and replanted here for posterity and gullible hotel guests. Amazing, all dark wood and nooks and cranny's, right up my Strasser, but not totally Sara's cup of tea. Including when between 0100 and 0500 the hotel minions rolled 100 tables past our mansion as they were clearing the wedding, and whistling while they worked. Me? I'm deaf as a post. Sara? Not so much. Cue complaint in the morning, not by me, I kept my head down, but by the head of Hotel Bookings. So our third room was an upgrade to THE ROYAL SUITE no less, biggest and most expensive room in the hotel. Massive, wall to wall views, dining table for six, office (where I am tapping this out) and because we'd been here three days and stayed in two of the most expensive rooms - what service! Once the General Manager had joined us at dinner we were royalty. I almost regret slinking away as Sara was handing out the bollockings. So you choose below which you prefer from the two videos. ​
​CURRY FOR BREAKFAST, LUNCH AND DINNER
I did have both hotel room videos playing side by side but it proved impossible to watch them playing together, so the other one is down below. I know, this blog is not supposed to be an advert for Leela hotel rooms, but they are amazing rooms.
No matter. We loved the rooms and the location. All three days were designated as rest days, we did not even leave the hotel. We lay in the sun, chilled, ate, drank and made merry (not as merry as Sara in Pondicherry with her cocktails I hasten to add). Sara got a tan, I got a very nice pink.
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Excellent food, as long as you like hot spicey mutton curry for breakfast, seriously, everything at breakfast was spicy, and not in a mild way either. Minor exception for the very few western guests was a hidden corner with just boiled eggs and fried tomatoes, praise the Lord for Marmite. Even the coffee was Indian style with condensed milk already added in the urn.​
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And we planned. Two laptops out, two phones out, screens all over the shops, all buzzing away for a couple of hours. Even we felt we might have been a tad lackadaisical over our next move. Prices had risen, dates were changed, plans HAD to be made.
After all we are up, up and away tomorrow and we have nowt sorted. So we book a car to go north, a hotel up in mid Kerela, a two day, one night on a boat in the Kerala backwaters, a trip to Cochin (the capital) and then a run up into the mountains for a breath of fresh air and some trekking. ​​​
THE MALDIVES OR BUST! (AND I MEAN BUST, AS IN GOING BUST)
We book the MALDIVES!!!!!! Sara has here heart set on visiting the Maldives, a particular hotel in the Maldives, The Saii Lagoon, a snip at somewhere north of £450 a night (not including the £150 return speedboat, food, drinks, and probably electricity to the room, but I have been sworn to no whinging, so it's fine). My biggest ever mistake was Sara knew the excessive cost and though it might not be fair on me, so an a time she knew I was weakest (or deafest) she made me an offer I could not refuse. "Darling, I really want to go to the Maldives so I'm happy to pay the extra over our budget". Me - "No darling, that's fine, we'll share the cost". Me - a total knob, Sara - a gets a RESULT!!! That apparently is what is called a 'One time offer'. I know that now. Too my cost.
UPDATE: Sara hoodwinked me. The room alone is apparently £520 a night and its a tenner for a beer and score for a club sandwich. But it's too late to back out now, or so I'm told.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN......
So after cruising past the big breasted lighthouse over Sara's right shoulder, don't pretend you didn't see it, we are off in the morning for a 3.5 hour run up north to the lake district of Kerela.
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Our hotel is another excellent choice in KUMARAKUM, and the journey clearly showed that this part of Kerela is really clean compared to the east coast of India near Chennai, Far more attractive and much calmer, less traffic, less pollution, way more big breasted lighthouses.
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Arrive at the hotel, overnight stay, anticipating our two day, one night luxury houseboat trip on the famous backwaters of Kerela, a tourist must-do. Houseboat appears, we leap on, and ooops! Not quite the lap of luxury we expected, and within minutes of casting off another fly in the ointment made its presence known - no bloody beer on board!! Grim faces, but we're stuck now on a floating prison. Or are we??? To ward of fears of a night with no beer I chat to the Skipper about the route, he looks blankly at me. One, because he does not understand a word of English, two, because as far as he is concerned our stay on his boat is NOT overnight at all. It is just four hours long and ends when he makes us walk the plank in the main town, not far of the larboard bow. Cock-up ahoy!
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Now some tourists would be saddened by this abrupt glitch in their plans. Not us, we leapt on it. Phones on, alternative hotel booked for the night, and only then let our man Tamil know that his organisation had failed him and we had escaped. "I will fix it!" he wailed. "Too late!" we replied. Send refund to this address - we're off!!
SLIGHT ISSUES WITH OUR ALCOHOLISM
It does look idyllic, but BACKWATERS pall after about four hours. Houseboat after houseboat after houseboat, like a hot and humid Norfolk Broads - but the clincher - no BEER. Anyway, we did it. If anyone asks we did indeed enjoy a houseboat on the fabled Kerela Backwaters, tick that box. Now taxi - straight to our new hotel and don't spare the horses. I need a beer!!!!
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Lovely hotel, probably 200 rooms, 40 minutes north of where we jumped ship. Pulled up, impressive gates, nice welcome by two weirdly passive junior managers, very, very quiet all round. Sara mildly enquired if she needed to book her much anticipated spa and massage appointments. No need apparently. The Spa was closed, the bar was closed, and we were the ONLY two guests in the hotel for the duration of our, now extended, three night stay. And we found this out just seconds after I had paid them £300. General Manager summoned, refund agreed, taxi called, phones out, its getting late and dark, we need to find a new bolthole tout-suite. 40 minutes back, almost to where the pirates dropped us, and we are in luck! In this hotel it is so full we can only have a suite for £400 for 3 nights - so we grab it - the last room. Bingo, cracked it, down to dinner. "Beers all round my man!". Wobbly Indian head thing - "Sorry Sir, this hotel is DRY" Seriously, could you odds it? So Boat £130, first hotel £300, second hotel £400, plus cabs. And still no bloody beers.
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We finally find another venue along the road that does to beer and wine and head off there with an equally disgruntled English couple for dinner and a piss-up. This gives us nice thick heads for our walking tour of Allaphoza tomorrow. Every town round here seems to have new names, two names, Allaphoza is also Alleppey, just like the Gulf of Mexico is also the Gulf of America I guess. Madras/Chennai, Bangalore/Bengaluru - It's like a disease, I want to be a signwriter in India/India, make a fortune changing them names every year or so.
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MEN ARE FROM MARS, WOMEN ARE FROM VENUS
Before we move on I want to make one small observation on the male/female divide. Below is a shot of what Sara lugs into the bathroom at each hotel (and lugs thousands of miles in her case taking up 40% of her luggage) in order to look stunningly beautiful. On the right of the picture is what I carry to achieve the exact same effect.
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BUT IN THE INTERESTS OF FAIRNESS
Sara somehow spotted that I had photographed her 10kg of make up and spray paint, and INSISTED, quite volubly, that I set the record straight and fess up about the 10kg of assorted electronics, tools and general useful equipment that I lug around. A simple matter of five screens (laptop, iPad, iPhone, apple watch, spare iPhone) a mile of charging cables, three different chargers, Swiss army knife, torch, first aid kit etc, etc, etc. Sara's electronics are on the right. Point taken. But in my defence only I can extract a boy scout from a horses hoof.
NOT ANOTHER PUBLIC HOLIDAY!!
Off we trot into town by tuk-tuk to R.V with our walking guide. Pop in early to wander around the shops. Wrong. Every poxy shop is closed. Town is a morgue. Flipping Republic Day this time. Spend an hour sitting in a bus shelter on a main road scaring the locals. I think seeing us in this context for the locals is like us being in Maidstone and seeing two unicorns waiting for a bus. Unsettling to say the least. Anyway after a 1000 stares and a few cheery waves (but oddly no requests for selfies) we got to enjoy a couple of hours passing yet more shuttered museums, temples and places of disinterest. Below you can see a depressed guide looking at yet another locked tourist site, and then us feeling a lot better, and way more refreshed, with our new found drinking buddies Rob and Pippa, the aforementioned couple from our hotel who exclaimed WHAT???!! about 30 seconds after I exclaimed WHAT???!! when hearing our hotel was dry. We overcame the problem in spades.
ON THE ROAD AGAIN - NORTH TO KOCHIN
Or Cochi as the Indian habit of renaming everywhere continues. We stayed in the old town of Fort Cochi and Jew Town, all spice markets, perfumeries and hundreds of massive antique shops stocking tons and tons of massive antiques. Nice place, very interesting. In the photos below you can see they forge every brand of scent by simply buying a bottle of CREED AVENTUS (UK price £300) and making an educated guess of what is in it and mixing up a really good copy in the shop for a tenner. Fascinating shop. Then next door was the pet shop, with actual fishes in actual wine glasses, there is NEVER and RSPCA inspector around when you need one.......
ALCOHOLICS NOT ANONYMOUS
Then it was 'hunt the bar' time again, and we succeeded at Brutons Boatyard, a very nice traditional hotel on the waterfront where within minutes we had fallen in with another UK couple who were bemoaning the dry state of the state of Kerela. They alerted us to the fact that our next hotel up in the hill station of MUNNAR might be dry, we checked, it was! The hotel's mistake was to use the phrase "Enjoy an evening at dinner browsing our extensive wine list and sample our fine wines" on their website. Booking.com took our side and cancelled our uncancellable booking, much to the chagrin of the hotel, and we re-booked with one that did have a bar (or did it?).
THIRTY IN A THIRTY
Once we sobered up it was time to get back in the saddle. This time for a ride round town and into the backwaters on bikes. Once we met up with our guide we started to wonder if we had bitten off more than we could chew. Apparently what we signed up to attempt to chew was 30 kilometres in 30 degrees of heat and what felt like 130 degrees of humidity over some 4-5 hours. We upgraded to e-bikes on the spot, and thank goodness we did. The first 10k was on packed streets, buses, trucks, cars, scooters, all staring at two loons and a guide wobbling alongside them as the only cyclists in town. The next 10k was on rutted tracks and along precarious narrow bunds with water both sides, then back onto the road again, with one proper stop for a cup of tea at what I can only describe as a roadside slum. BUT IT WAS FUN. Met local fisherman, Saw loads of things. Great exercise and as you can see below, worth it for the beach alone. Excuse the one 'arty' photo below.
Four hours later we dragged our ragged arses off our saddles and waddled back to the hotel ready for a move up country on the morrow. A five hour drive, but this time in a luxury SUV, not a flipping tiny taxi or a spluttering tuk-tuk. £100 extra for the upgrade and money well spent! Our driver Sayis is with us 24 hours a day for four days.
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Munnar is a recently developed tourist destination, an old hill station at 5,500ft (1,700m) up in the hills, much cooler, all jungle, tea plantations, trekking, the works. We set off and part way up we stop at the fabled Chinnakanal Waterfall. To say it was underwhelming was an understatement, but Sara brightened it up!!!
I agree -what was she thinking? A fashion show next to a non existent Indian waterfall - has the girl lost her mind? Personally l like the lurex dress bottom left. But needs must when the devil drives. If there is no water in the waterfall then Sara steps in. Or might AI have stepped in with a new toy on my iPhone?
EVEN I AM STARTING TO THINK THE REPETATIVE REFERENCES TO ALCOHOL ARE A BIT MUCH...
But there is a point. We are on holiday. It is hot. At the end of the day is it really too much too much to ask for a cold beer? No, of course not. So we had put some work into ensuring The Scenic Hotel, part of the renowned Taj Group of hotels, did serve beer and wine. But we had started to appreciated the duplicity of Indian hotel receptionists. So we asked our driver to stop at a Government Beer/Wine shop. He forgot. So we stopped at a bar in a decrepit block of flats. He came in with me. Luckily. Iron door, pitch black inside, both lighting and occupants, all smoking and drinking whiskey at plastic tables. Pay a guy behind a steel grill the money for four big Kingfisher beers and a bottle of their finest Indian white wine. I did ask to see the wine list but he just ignored me and handed me what I have to presume was his finest, after all I was so obviously the best dressed and richest man in the bar with a nice watch....... time to leave. Got to our hotel, and yes, they were DRY. But I had stock!
Up in the morning bright and early, and sans hangover, can't rush through the limited booze stocks. Off to meet our guide for a 4 hour trek through the tea estates. Great guy, good English, 57, lived in Munnar all his life, knew his stuff. His stuff was to drag us bodily about 400m up from the town to various high points and then bring us back down and even steeper, rockier, slipperier way. And we still booked him for tomorrow.
I include the big photo just to show how lovely it is, the lovely-dovey photo was the guides idea, and the close up is to educate you. The central small thin leave is hand picked first by specialist ladies and used for 'white tea, then they pick the second leave, again individually for 'green tea', then they use a hedge cutter for Typhoo.
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All of this is at 1,700m or 5,500ft, nice and cool and thankfully pleasantly cloudy to avoid us being roasted by the sun as we slog hour after hour. Sara described the landscape as 'Jigsaw Puzzle Hills'. She is referring of course to the way the individual tea bushes look like pieces in a jigsaw, but you knew that. She has a way with words (which I am obliged to include in this blog, its a contractual issue, I'm sure you understand).
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HOW TO ARRIVE AT A CINDERELLA TIP
I would not like to think how many hours on each of our trips I spend mentally agonising over how much to tip our guides/drivers. What is too much, what is insultingly too little, what is just right? John, our guide went over the history of the tea bushes. Planted in 1880 by an Englishman (natch), taken over by the Indian Government in 1948 after independence (obs), immediately left to rot and run from neat bushes back to trees as nobody could be arsed to look after them (wow, surprise), bought by TATA the big Indian firm years later, rescued, and now brilliantly well run (bit like Jaguar Land Rover then). The point being that he told us that Tata were great employers and paid £15 a day!!! Brilliant money he said. Poor fool John. The tour cost for the day was £26 so I was going to bump that up by giving him personally £14 tip, making £40. Cinderella tip - paid him £9 tip instead, making £35. He should have kept quiet. Looked happy though. Seriously though, I worry more about getting the tip right than about booking a hotel with flipping beer! My priorities are shot away.
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GETTING AWAY FROM IT ALL - ENJOYING SIMPLE PLEASURES
On the bright side for John, we promptly hired him for the following day, a real 'Indian Tourist' day, doing what the locals do. On the road at 10.00am for a five hour drive up a long and winding road to 'Top Point', a local high point, and turn round and come back down again. Now be warned, Christ the Redeemer in Rio, or The Iguazu Falls, this ain't. This is a far more down-home form of tourism. This is - in order of importance - having your photo taken in front of a hoarding advertising 'Ripple Tea', visiting a dam, shouting across a lake at 'Echo Point', visiting a second dam where there are very tall trees, getting to Top Point in thick fog (see zero view), having an egg banjo inside a tiny shop and then driving back, narrowly avoiding the Tea Factory visit due to the thousands of Indian tourists on hundreds of buses all milling around in the middle of the road. That is TOURISM in it's most basic form. And we loved it. With guide John who has lived here all his life we saw so much more than if we had been on a normal tour. Being looked after by his mates, amazing hospitality, swapping stories, eating local food and sitting inside their tiny houses/shops/huts was great. We are now totally relaxed into it.
Serious touristing shit going on here, Admire the framing of that shot of us, and that classic dam...
And Sara pulling a hoard of local lads, and me retaliating and risking arrest with a bevy of girls.... All because, once again, we were the ONLY non Indians around all day, and there were thousands of people.
LUNCH AT TOP POINT
Our guide stopped off at a beer shop to buy us three beers for lunch. We had visions of a nice little bistro, he had in his mind popping us into the back of his mates shop. His mate, in the photo, is James Wilfred, 57, fourth generation in this hut/shop. Family been there since 1925, 6,000ft up in the fog (there was no visibility at Top Point). In the 100 years they've been there they have obviously never knowingly tidied up. Stuff may have blown off this windy ridge, but stuff has never been piled neatly. Where a flight of steps may have been useful, a jumble of old haphazard rocks suffice. I was going to take James Wilfred to task about this but it seemed a shame to spoil his centenary year, and his egg banjos were 30p and top notch!
The ride up, and back, was achingly beautiful, the tea bushes are this bright verdant green, the neatness is formal garden like, the slopes vary from rolling hills to vertiginous cliffs of green jigsaw shaped tea plants, and the tea pickers are sweet little things with pink heads.
COMING DOWN FROM THE HILLS TO SEA LEVEL AGAIN
It's next stop The Maldives. Tomorrow we drive the 4 hours back to Cochin and stay at an airport hotel as we have to be checking in at 0730 for our flight to Male, the capital of The Maldives. On arrival we actually have one night in Male Town, just cooling our heels until the £150 transfer (a whole 20 minutes of a speedboat, how DO they do it for just £150?) before we are wafted into our £520 a night room at the Saii Lagoon (opposite the Hard Rock Hotel, so it should be peaceful). Why waste a night in Male I hear you ask. Well it's because we (Sara) was simply not prepared to risk a flight delay/cancellation ruining her dream Maldivian sojourn. So we are getting there a mere 24 hours prior to the Saii Lagoon hotel check in time - just in case.
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Because our flight Cochin-Maldives means a 7.30am check in we stop overnight in a Marriot hotel at the airport. Definitely has a bar, but would you believe it? It's the first day of the month - which means? A pinch and a punch for the first of the month and the bar is closed to boot! Yup, the first of every month in Communist run Kerela is a DRY day. You couldn't make it up. But it gets better, Male, capital of The Maldives is also DRY! This is turning out to be a real de-tox holiday, unwittingly. We absolutely know SAII LAGOON has a bar, so that is a plus. However, a small downside is that beers are $10 each and the cheapest wine is $50 so my intake may still be limited :(
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BEFORE WE LEAVE INDIA - TWO SMALL OBSERVATIONS
1. Don't visit India if you don't like Indian food for breakfast, lunch and dinner, really. Everything is spicy. And most of it is UK Madras style spicey bordering on Vindaloo at times. We are in areas not much frequented by European tourists so we only have ourselves to blame I suppose, so for me its breakfast on a boiled egg and Marmite on toast. All other meals begin with a small coughing fit as the chilli kicks in.
2. Don't visit India if you are of a nervous disposition as a car passenger. My hearing aids are turned down on long car journeys as Sara squeals are ear splittingly piercing. Apparently they have a saying here on the sub-continent "If you see a gap - go for it". And boy do they go for it! On a blind bend, just before a blind brow, in fourth (only wimps change down) to pass a massive bus. So in an hours drive they may pass 100 scooters/cars/buses, all doing broadly the same speed, all nose to tail, with every pass potentially life threatening. All to get maybe 500 yards ahead at the end of the hour. A distance they could travel in less than a minute. And all the time cocking a deaf'un to the mewling passengers in the back who are paying for the privilege. In 2023 I drove about a 600 miles in Bali, and the Balinese are, if anything, even crazier, and I only overtook proper slow coaches, on straights, in third gear. They all thought I was a proper wanker, no fun at all, no sense of adventure.
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SO ONWARD TO THE MALDIVES................