Southern India

It was hard to leave our beach life in Goa but we eventually hitch hiked away heading south. Our plan was to slowly move south and then take a ferry over to Sri Lanka to spend some time there. We had no problems getting rides in India. We usually got picked up by rich Indians driving fancy cars. The further south we went, the less poverty we seemed to see. We passed through farming communities that raised lots of rice, wheat, bananas, mangoes, papayas, coconuts and palm oil and many other crops. I loved watching the workers planting rice and using the water buffaloes to plow with. We stopped frequently to sample all the local foods. India seems to have different cuisine every couple of hundred miles. The variety of ways to make curry astounded me. I loved eating off of a banana leaf with a mound of rice in the middle and a circle of different curries and condiments circling the mound of rice. Eating with my hands took a while to get all the techniques and cultural taboos down but I really enjoyed this style of food. I ate a very healthy diet with lots of fruit and vegies that was low fat and low salt. I always ordered way more food than I could eat so that I could give away food to the poor people on the streets.

Dealing with the less fortunate poverty stricken Indians on the street was a real challenge. The beggars thought nothing of maiming a healthy baby so that they would grow up as pathetic looking innocent disabled people so that people would give them more money. The beggars make an art out of looking as pathetic as possible to pull on the heart strings of the most hardened person. Indians themselves seem to be quite generous in their giving to these street beggars. I tried to give as much as I could without giving away everything which would have sent me home.

We spent time looking at all the temples along the way. Indians love to celebrate and there seemed to be almost daily celebrations in the street for one god or another. There were so many parades that I saw with elephants and other animals like monkeys performing stunts that we became rather blase over parades after spending so long in the country. We saw a very loud parade one day where the people were particularly loud and animated. I could not figure out what was going on. It almost seemed more like a riot. It turned out to be a celebration for the first durian fruit harvest. Durian is a large ugly green spiky fruit that when cut open is the stinkiest food in the entire world. The people went crazy for it though. I don't know how they were able to eat the stinky fruit. They not only ate it they rioted to get it. I could not eat it. I tried. I got some in my mouth and I must say it tasted better than it smelled but I still gagged on the slimy sweet pulp. Now jack fruit I liked. Jackfruit was a common offering at the temples. It looked gorgeous with some flowers on an offering plate. Jackfruit was like a huge yellow orange that tasted like pineapple. Mangos were my altime favorite fruit though. I chased the mango season all over Africa and here in India they tasted even better for some reason. I liked the mango juice too.

Kerala and Tamil Nadu seemed much richer than the northern states of India. The people generally seemed happier and healthier. The food was better too in my opinion. I snacked on street food all over India. I almost never had troubles with my stomach or anything. I think the fact that I ate searingly hot curries everyday killed off the bad things I ate along with the food. I loved samosas and all the flat breads available on the street with various fillings. The sticky sweet desserts were not my favorites but Kirtsen liked the sweets.

It was costing us almost nothing for a budget traveling like this. We sometimes stayed with the people that picked us up hitching or sometimes stayed at small hotels that other travelers told us about. We often just put up our tent and stayed in it. That was my preference because I knew there were no bedbugs or anything in my own tent. We often walked as we hitched rides. I enjoy walking and to walk down a country road and watch the farmers work their fields was always fun for me. There was a lot of intensive hand work in the farming in India as opposed to just driving a tractor like I usually did back home on the farm. Sometimes the farmers would throw dead snakes up on the road or rats. India seemed to have an awful lot of snakes and rats. Many times I heard big commotions in towns or villages that turned out to be people screaming about cobras in their houses or on the streets. Cobras seemed to have no fear of the people.

We took a river boat ride in Kerala. This area of India had a lot of water ways and was very flat. We cruised around watching the world float by from the peace and quiet of the boat. Normally everywhere we went there was a crowd of people around us either begging or just watching the strangers in their land. From the boat we could watch without interference from our presence and without the crowds gathering around us. All the people we ran into were very nice to us. They were generous with offering us food shelter and advice or history about their area. Other than a few pickpockets and petty thieves we had no negative experiences with any of the people. Quite the contrary, their helpfulness was often times overwhelming for us.

The one thing about India that eventually got to me was all the uniformity. Say there were twenty people in a group around us trying to talk to us and interact. One person would start off the conversation with a statement like, "Hello. From which country do you come?" after we responded then the next question would be asked, "What is the purpose of your visit to our country?" Again we would answer for the whole group to hear our answers. These questions would go on for a while from the first person to talk. Then the next person would talk, "Hello, From which country do you come?" I thought we just answered that question but we had to answer all the same questions from each person. It was like they only had one book on how to speak English that they all memorized and then to speak English they had to recite the lesson back from rote memory. It got real old real fast. Sometimes I would mess with them and answer the questions before they asked. They could not comprehend and still had to ask me the same questions in the same order over and over again all throughout India.

One other little cultural habit sometimes irritated me. We sometimes took buses or trains in India. If we were the first people on the train or bus and we sat down in a seat, then the next person got on the bus and would immediately crowd into our seat instead of taking the empty seat across the aisle from us. Indians seemed to have a need to be crowded and in close contact at all times. When they had a chance to spread out they did not do it. They liked being in a crowd. I learned to tolerate this but every time it happened I was amazed by this instinct they all seemed to have. At first I would just get up and move to the empty seat myself but many times they would either follow us or get really angry at us for moving. I guess they took it as an insult when we moved away from them. Later on when we got to Calcutta this behavior became extremely common. Different strokes for different folks I guess.

We made it all the way down to the southern tip of India where the ferry left for Sri Lanka without any problems whatsoever. Our trip from Goa to here was very enjoyable and relaxed. Maybe it was just that such a long time relaxing on the beach made us more laid back in general or something. Life was good. We had been in India for over six months and neither of us was sick and we had not encountered any real problems or bad experiences. I was gaining some weight and we were enjoying ourselves.