Me and my manly scooter...

I am now two weeks into my time in China, and feel it is definitely time to finish sharing my adventures from India! China has been a great experience so far – I have been incredibly lucky to meet some absolutely amazing people, on a range of trips and adventures, for reasons ranging from a short trip away from work, to years of backpacking in an attempt to escape the monotony and boredom of everyday life back home. The weather is getting colder the further north I head, and this morning I am writing from a McDonalds restaurant in Beijing – I travelled overnight and attempted to catch the subway to my hostel – however it turns out when you are over 6ft tall, broader than three Chinese commuters put together, and carrying a large backpack, the crush of peak hour pedestrians is not the easiest or most accommodating of places to be!

Kerala - "God's Own Country"

Leaving Auroville, I spent a day enjoying the French provincial architecture and parks of Puducherry (formerly Pondicherry), before boarding an over-night bus to Kerala, a coastal state in southwest India, and very highly promoted as ‘God’s Own Country’ – which after 6 weeks in the pollution, over-crowding and poverty of India, was a marketing strategy I was going to wait to see to believe.

Varkala Beach

My first stop in Kerala was Varkala, a budget tourist beach resort, set high on a cliff overlooking the black and grey sands of the beach below. The resort precariously follows the shape of the cliff, and is lined with dozens of similar restaurants, serving a range of sensational Indian foods, and some downright terrible attempts at western dishes. I spent hours people-watching, and quite quickly realised that a typical day in the life of a Varkala tourist consists of waking up mid-morning, hung-over and peeling from previous days of sunburn, before sitting down without any sun protection, in the full sun, outside a restaurant to watch the world go by, and ease the hangover with a greasy late-breakfast and fresh orange juice. With the greasy breakfast now devoured, the typically overweight-yet-still-wearing-budgie-smugglers-or-bikinis-in-public tourists then wander the many shops and market-stalls (still dressed in their revealing-best!), on the look out for yet another cheap, loud, and revealing shirt or sarong in which to wear on the beach in the afternoon’s full sun. Failing to find something hideous or inappropriate enough for public view, the typical Varkala tourist then drops back into their accommodation to re-apply copious amounts of tanning lotion, re-grease their greying mullet, collect their bug-eyed sunglasses in order to achieve the prefect facial-tan-line, and then head down to the blistering hot sand, in the middle of the scorching heat of the day, to sunbake for the afternoon, while their under-paid hired waiters run up and down the steps to the beach, fetching food, drinks, and no doubt more hair-grease in which to maintain the tourists image for the afternoon. Following an afternoon of dermatological-murder, with skin peeling in the same pattern as a Woolworths tiger loaf, the typical tourist then heads back up the cliff, to relieve their incredibly dehydrated and burnt bodies with excessive consumption of Kingfisher beer or cheap spirits, before settling into yet another restaurant to watch the sunset, tuck into an excessively sized dinner banquet, before ending the night with a few more beers to rehydrate their bodies ready for the same treatment tomorrow. As you can tell, I fit right in!

Trashy, middle-aged, overweight, bogan tourists aside, I did actually have a great time in Varkala. On realising I was probably not going to enjoy three days spent lazing around the resort, I hired yet another motorbike (okay, it was actually a scooter this time, but that doesn’t sound as hardcore!), and went in search of the real Kerala. Riding just two hours out of town, I began to realise why Kerala is called ‘God’s Own Country’, as the hustle, pollution and tourism of Varkala opened up into some of the most untouched, beautiful scenery I had seen in India. White, pristine beaches stretched as far as the eye could see, broken up every now and then with yet another palm-tree lined canal or waterway snaking it’s way to the ocean. The coast was scattered with small, quaint fishing communities, with canoes and boats upturned on the pollution-free sand (I know, I couldn’t even believe it myself!), and tree after tree of hand woven fishing nets, hanging down to dry, as the days catch was left to dry in the sun below. As I rode through communities sometimes consisting of just a couple of weathered structures, faded in the blistering sun, I was greeted by countless fishermen and locals – seemingly oblivious to the fact I was a tourist – with a wave, a local greeting and a smile. This wasn’t the India I was used to!

Blown away by the beauty of the Kerala backwaters, the friendly, kind and caring locals, and the dramatic contrast between the beach resort in which I was staying, and the local communities just kilometres down the road, I thought my adventures couldn’t get any better. Then school finished. Throughout my travels in both India and Nepal, I had been incredibly impressed with the immaculate dress, behaviour and attitude of all the school students I had come across (a great difference to the public behaviour of students back in Australia!) however what happened next, on my manly, butch scooter in a small town I don’t even know the name of, was truly unforgettable. Riding leisurely into the town – the main street following the path of one of the magnificent tree-lined backwaters – I was greeted by a street filled with 100 or so parents and students, obviously walking home from the local school. As I got closer to the group, I was quite amused when a couple of students who had seen me, stepped out onto the road, with their hands out ready for a high five. Of course, not wanting to disappoint these kids, and feeling relatively confident at taking one hand off the handlebars, I reached out and gave the kids a high five, much to their obvious delight, and quite loud cheering. Not surprisingly, this cheering attracted the attention of the rest of the group, and within seconds, I found myself faced with a whole street of children, holding their hands out into the street, as their parents watched on with a look of great excitement. By this stage more confident at riding one-handed, I rode the entire stretch of the main street, high fiving countless kids as I went, followed the whole way by shouts and cheers from the students, and sporting a smile broader than I thought possible.

The Kerala Backwaters

Just out of town...

I spent three nights in Varkala, riding my scooter for a couple of hours each day out into the countryside, and walking the beach and resort at night time (where I unexpectedly bumped into the famed Harriet from Hahndorf!). I don’t know what I was expecting from a beach resort in a country where a woman cannot show her shoulder without being chastised by her community, let alone wear a bathing suit, and where the local police have to patrol the beach to stop local men participating in lewd acts while watching female tourists walk the beach below… but I do know what I ended up with. I ended up with an adventure into towns and communities where tourists rarely go, where I was warmly welcomed because I was a human being, and not because of the tourist dollar in my pocket, and most importantly, I ended up with an unforgettable few days amongst some of the most beautiful scenery the world has to offer. I spent hours wishing more tourists would make the effort to hire a bike and see some of what Kerala really has to offer (I only bumped into two tourists in my three days of exploring), yet I spent an equal amount of time realising my experience was only magical because the people and places I went were not filled with the typical tourist crowd.

Jeeping it on the look out
for a Tiger!

From Varkala, I headed toward the mountains, stopping overnight in Alleppey to explore the backwaters in a canoe, before making my through rolling hills, filled with rubber and tea plantations, to Kumily – a bustling town on the edge of the Periyar National Park. The Periyar National Park is famous for its booming wild tiger and elephant populations, and as I have since discovered, is almost as famous for the boat tragedy which claimed 45 tourists lives in 2009 – a fact they didn’t happen to mention when I was booking my boat trip inside the park! I spent my first day walking the breath-taking tea and spice plantations of the region, learning about the importance and many uses of spices and tea as herbal medicines in Indian culture. I booked myself on a sensational tour at a local plantation, and was enthralled with all the uses of the spices, however promptly forgot everything the second I stepped out of the gate! With limited time in Kumily, and minimal information in the Lonely Planet guide, I booked a wildlife tour through my guest house, and woke the next morning at 4.30am to head into the jungle in a Jeep – a rather cold journey at this time of the morning in the Indian mountains, but an interesting journey nonetheless, as the driver turned up the music, and we drove through the morning fog with Backstreet Boys, Enrique and Shakira blasting through the speakers. I met some brilliant, interesting people in the Jeep, however the tour was terrible, and has to be the most disappointing days of my time in India. We saw 3 monkeys, a bison, and a lot of ‘elephant footprints’, which looked to me like squashed leaves. I understand seeing animals in the wild is very much luck of the draw, however the rest of the tour was a joke – we spent hours filling time between boring activities, and to top it off, the day was probably the most expensive of my travels to date. Remind me not to do that one again!!!

I took a ride in a Ferrari!!!

Heading back down from the mountains (a 180km trip which took seven hours!), I made my way to Fort Kochi (formerly Cochin), a small fishing village occupied by the Portuguese in the 16^th century, and now a busy tourist town, set on the banks of one of Kerala’s many polluted waterways. My last couple of days in India were spent strolling the streets and shops of the fort (I bought too much and had to ship it home!), watching local fishermen use ancient shore-based counterweighted Chinese fishing nets, to hoist their daily catch from the murky, polluted water of Kochi’s rivers, and spent my last day contracting a rather unpleasant bout of ‘Delhi Belly’ – which I was then fortunate to be able to carry with me on my next 13 hours of flights, and the 12 hour stopover at KL low cost terminal – more a garden shed with filthy tiled floor than what I would usually refer to as a terminal. As you can imagine, a pleasant journey to China!