April 20-24, 2014: Sri Lanka - Negombo and Colombo

I flew from the Maldives to Sri Lanka on the morning of the 20th, first taking the ferry about 7 from Male to the airport and then a 9:30 flight.  The flight took just over an hour and arrived just after 11 Sri Lanka time, a half hour later than the Maldives.  Rather than head into Colombo, Sri Lanka's congested capital, with almost 3 million of Sri Lanka's 21 million people, I decided to go first to Negombo, a much smaller town on the coast north of Colombo and closer to the airport than Colombo.  Negombo is only six miles from the airport but it took me a while to get there under a hot midday sun.  The bus at one point filled up with girls dressed all in white coming home from church on Easter Sunday.  Negombo and places nearby have lots of Christians, dating from the Portuguese era.  (The Portuguese were the predominant European power in Sri Lanka from the early 16th century to the mid 17th century, followed by the Dutch, and then by the British from 1796 until independence in 1948.)

In Negombo I checked into a hotel on the beach.  The day was sweltering, hot and humid, with no breeze.  I missed the constant breeze off the ocean I felt in the Maldives.  I ate lunch and then spent several afternoon hours in an air conditioned internet cafe.  I did walk along the beach, crowded with local folks, just before and after sunset.  The sun set into the mass of haze on the horizon.  That night my room had a slow moving fan and was very hot.  And I had been spoiled by six nights in air conditioned rooms in the Maldives, though generally I prefer sleeping under a fan rather than air conditioning.

The next morning about 7:30 I walked to the town center, a half hour walk south from my hotel.  The day was already hot and humid.  The town has some colonial era buildings, including the now very run down New Rest House, where Queen Elizabeth stayed in 1958.  Nearby is the fish market right next to the beach.  In fact, thousands of fish were drying under the sun on the beach.  A guy explained to me that, after they are caught, the fish are packed in salt water and salt for a day, then dried under the sun for about three days, depending upon the weather. 

On the beach closer to the water, fishermen were bringing fish in from their boats in baskets.  The fish were then cleaned by their women folk before being dumped into big plastic barrels which when full were filled with sea water and then topped off with bucket fulls of salt.  Crows and dogs gathered around the piles of fish and their entrails.  Just inland fresh fish was on sale at an open air market, filled with people and all sorts of fish.  Some of the expert fish cleaners and cutters in the market were women.

Nearby are the meager remains of a fort, with an archway dated 1678.  An 1879 Anglican Church stands nearby.  Negombo is situated just north of a big lagoon, filled with boats.  I saw a couple of oruwas, the local catarmaran fishing vessel, being poled along the lagoon.  From the lagoon a Dutch built canal heads in a straight line north to Puttalam, maybe 50 miles away.  Negombo is also connected to Colombo via canal.  I walked along the canal a short way and then made my way past a couple of big churches to a restaurant in an old building.  Lots of streets have Christian names, such as St. Sebastian and Ave Maria.  I saw a lot of Portuguese names, such as Perera, de Silva, and Fernando, on signs. 

After breakfast, I remained tin the restaurant reading under a fan, but it was hot.  Walking back to my hotel at midday was even hotter, under sunny skies but with thunder sounding from somewhere.  I again spent much of the afternoon at the internet cafe and then walked along the beach around sunset.  The red ball of the sun disappeared into the haze just over the horizon about 6:15.  The evening was humid, with little breeze.  I had changed rooms, and slept better than the previous night, but it was still hot.  Negombo (and Colombo) are about 7 degrees latitude north of the equator.

The next morning was sunny and clear and after breakfast at my hotel I took an express bus to Colombo, about 20 miles south, a 45 minute journey.  On a new four lane highway we passed the lagoon south of Negombo and lots of palm trees.  The bus station in Colombo is near the main train station, and I took a suburban train for a ten minute ride from the train station south along the coast, with some nice views out to sea, a little over a mile to the section of town called Bambalapitiya, where I checked into a hotel.   

I walked back to the little Bambalapitiya train station in hope of taking a train back north to the old city center, but there wasn't a train for more than an hour.  The sky was darkening, so I decided instead to head to the National Museum.  As I stopped and waited for a gap in the traffic to cross safely the four lane road in front of the train station, vehicles in both directions stopped to let me walk across.  It took me a while to realize that they had stopped for me and then hurried acros.  That would never happen in India.  Also, I've noticed that drivers in Sri Lanka, even in a heavily populated, congested place like Colombo, manage to drive without constantly leaning on their horns as Indians do, and while it is not litter free, Sri Lanka certainly is cleaner than India. What a difference the the twenty miles or so of sea that separates the two countries makes.

I took an auto rickshaw, called a tuktuk in Sri Lanka, as in Thailand, to the National Museum, a handsome white neoclassical building dating from 1877.  In front of it stands a statue of the British Governor under whom it was built.  I spent almost five hours there enjoying the interesting stuff inside and outside. It was all fairly well presented, too, though the lighting could have been better in places.  The sky was clear when I entered, but I heard thunder not too long after I entered and later saw the ground outside all wet.  Under dark skies I walked around the grounds, with big lawns and some impressive banyan trees.  There are several old white colonial buildings on the premises.  A statue of a very dour Queen Victoria, commemorating her Diamond Jubilee in 1897, sits to the back. 

Despite a few raindrops I decided to walk back to my hotel through the section of town known as Cinnamon Gardens, which was a cinnamon plantation only a century or so ago. I passed some grand old colonial buildings.  I unfurled my umbrella when the raindrops increased.  It took me about an hour to get back to my hotel, with my arrival after dark.  The last ten minutes or so the rain really got heavy and I got fairly wet and even little muddy as the sidewalks on a major street leading to my hotel had been torn up for roadwork.  The rain stopped as soon as I got to my hotel.

The sun was out the next morning as I took a city bus north up Galle Road, the city's main north-south street.  We passed the heavily fortified American and Indian embassies, and perhaps the even more heavily fortified Prime Minister's Office.  A little north is the open, grassy Galle Face Green, fronting the ocean.  I could see several cargo ships out on the ocean.  I got off at the colonial Secretariat, just north of Galle Face Green.  In front of the Secretariat are several statues of Sri Lanka's former leaders, including Sri Lanka's first prime minister, who died in a fall from his horse while riding in Galle Face Green in 1952. 

From the Secretariat I walked north along the oceanfront to the area of town called Fort, though all traces of the fort have disappeared.  This was the city center until the civil war, when Tamil Tiger bombings drove businesses to other parts of town.  The Predident's residence is in Fort, so many streets are blocked.  I walked north along the coast past a lighthouse to a giant dagoba (a sort of stupa) on concrete stilts, built in 1956 to commemorate the 2500th anniversary of Buddha's death.  Nearby is a maritime museum in an old colonial building.  Both were closed, so I retraced my steps because of the road closures and reached the eastern part of Fort, with several majestic old colonial buildings, plus some modern skyscrapers.  Particularly impressive were a giant, but now mostly empty, red brick Cargill's department store, built in 1906, the Central Bank Building, and the late 19th century Grand Oriental Hotel, known as the GOH. 

The GOH fronts the harbor.  I looked around inside the hotel, where there are some interesting old photos of the hotel and the streets around it and a good view of the port from the 4th floor restaurant.  Colombo became Sri Lanka's premier port, replacing Galle, only a little more than a century ago, after the British enlarged the harbor in the 1880's.  Just west of the GOH is St. Peter's, an 1821 Anglican Church built on the site of the 1680 Dutch Governor's residence. 

From Fort I walked east to the adjacent part of town called Pettah, full of narrow commercial streets.  I ate lunch near the train station, with a statue at the entrance of bearded American Henry Steel Olcutt, a 19th Buddhist and founder of the Theosophical Society who is given some of the credit for the revival of Buddhism in Sri Lanka and its spread worldwide. 

After lunch I spent some time in the Dutch Period Museum in a 1780 high ceiling building (probably 15 feet high on both floors) that is far more interesting than the vary modest contents of the museum.  Colombo (the Sinhalese called it Kolamba) wasn't a very important town until westerners arrived.  The Portuguese built a fort here in 1518 and held sway over the area until the fort was captured by the Dutch in 1656 after a seven month siege.  The Dutch turned over Colombo and the rest of their possessions to the British peacefully in 1796 when Holland was occupied by revolutionary France.

I next walked through the narrow streets to the 1873 decrepit old Town Hall, with a room full of mannequins, most in suits and ties, seated around a table reenacting a council meeting of perhaps a century ago.  A little further is the 1909 red and white three story mosque known as Jami ul-Aftar, which now has a not yet painted seven story addition towering over the three story old mosque.  A friendly bearded guy in a white skullcap outside showed me around and took me to a couple of spots along the narrow streets with good camera angles. 

Further along I passed two closed Hindu temples before arriving at the large 1749 Wolfendahl Church.  This church is Colombo's oldest.  Its floor is covered with finely carved floor tablets dating from the 18th century commemorating Dutch officials, including several governors, and their families, whose remains were moved here from Fort in 1813.

The sky had clouded up and darkened to the east by the time I arrived at the church around 3:30.  It rained some while I was inside, which had a very welcome cooling effect.  I spent about an hour inside the church looking around and then just sitting on a wicker pew and resting.  In expectation that it would soon rain, I took a tuktuk back to my hotel through heavy traffic, but it never did rain.

About 8:30 the next morning, once again sunny, I took the bus up to Galle Face Green and went into the Galle Face Hotel on its southern edge.  The old section of the hotel is undergoing restoration, so I could visit only the new section.  While I was sitting in the air conditioned lobby, a young British guy came up to me and asked me to show him how to tie his necktie.  Nearby is the colonial St. Andrew's Church and a little further inland is a lake with a small modern Buddhist temple over the water designed by Geoffrey Bawa, Sri Lanka's foremost 20th century architect. 

Nearby is a much gaudier, but very interesting, Buddhist temple called Gangaramaya, dating from only 1979.  The main hall has lots of giant yellow painted Buddha statues and several statues of other figures, plus colorful murals.  There are also several courtyards and other buildings, including a sort of museum full of some spectacular items, such as elephant tusks and magnificent ivory carvings, plus old watches, spectacles, typewriters and the like.  There were also some old printing presses and a couple of old Mercedes cars.

While I was there a trio of two drummers and a guy playing a sort of oboe about a foot long came in and played first in one section of the temple and then for longer in the main hall for some sort of ceremony, after which a orange-robed Buddhist monk chanted for a while.  The three musicians were dressed in beautiful costumes.  Sri Lankans, by the way, are much more likely than Indians to be dressed in western clothing.  I've seen only a very few men in dhotis.  The overwhelming majority of women, too, wear western dress, though I have seen quite a few women in saris or Islamic dress. 

In the museum portion of the temple is what appears to be a stuffed elephant, perhaps the former temple elephant, though it may be only a very realistic statue.  In a small courtyard toward the back is a juvenile elephant with very small tusks.  When I approached it reached out its wet tipped trunk to my hand.  Its keeper gave me a couple of bananas to feed him and permitted me to stroke its rough skin.

From the temple I took a tuktuk about noon to the Immigation office to get an extension of my 30 day visa.  It took almost two hours but I got another two months.  I had paid for my initial visa online before arriving, at a cost of $30.  The extension cost me a whopping $100, much more for Americans than for other nationalities.  The big hall was full of people and seemingly somewhat chaotic.  As I entered I talked with a guy on his way out who told me it had taken him three hours.  Mostly all I had to do was wait in an air conditioned hall, so that wasn't so bad.  I was worried I would have problems as I didn't have the required airline ticket out.  In my haste to fill out the application and get it submitted, I neglected to fill out the back of the page, with more required information, including about my airline ticket out, plus my signature.  That didn't seem to matter, though, as I got my extension without anyone calling to my attention the fact that I hadn't completed the application!

After a small lunch I walked past a red brick, seemingly deserted 1903 Victoria Memorial Hall and a gleaming white mosque to the 1927 Town Hall, a somewhat shabby version of the U.S. Capitol.  Across the street from the Town Hall sits a golden statue of a giant Buddha in Viharamahadevi Park, formerly Victoria Park.  I walked through the park, with thousands of fruit bats hanging from the tall trees or fluttering around the tree tops.  They were fun to watch.  The sky clouded up as walked through the park.  I sat on a bench for a while watching the bats and then walked into the brand new, just opened Performing Arts Center built by the Chinese, with an enormous air conditioned theater hall. It is right next to the National Museum. 

I walked again through the museum grounds and then walked south through the Cinnamon Gardens area again to the Independence Commemoration Hall, designed in copy of a building in Kandy.  Raindrops had begun to fall before I got there just before 5, and just after I got inside the open building the skies really let loose, for about two hours.  Quite a few of us, almost all Sri Lankans, sheltered inside.  After dark there was very impressive thunder and lightning. 

Finally, when the rain had slackened, I hoisted my umbrella and walked in the dark to a nearby major street, where I got a tuktuk back to my hotel.  There was more rain and thunder as I walked back to my hotel after dinner.  April and May are the rainiest months on Sri Lanka's west central and southwest coast and in the mountainous center of the country.  Elsewhere on the island, this is the dry season.  Sri Lanka is a small island, only about 270 miles from north to south and less than half that at the widest east-west point, but the two sides of the island have opposite wet and dry seasons. 

April 14-19, 2014: The Maldives

On the morning of the 14th I flew from Trivandrum, near the southern tip of India, to Male, the capital of the Maldives.  My Air India flight, which cost only $112, left soon after 11, about two hours late, and took just a bit more than an hour to arrive, flying southwest from Trivandrum for about 450 miles over the Indian Ocean. The Maldives are in a time zone half an hour earlier than India, so we arrived just before noon.  Just before landing, the plane circled over North Male Atoll, affording great views of coral reefs and small jungle-covered islands with white sand beaches.  I also saw ferries, dive boats, and a few luxury resorts from the air.  I had some close up views of some of the resorts, with rooms built out over the water, just as we approached the runway.  There were lots of foreign tourists at the modern airport.  I briefly looked around the airport, on its own island, and then took a wooden ferry from the airport to Male, less than a mile southwest of the airport island.  Male's northern waterfront is lined with buildings about eight stories high.  The ferry docks near Male's northeast point, and I found a hotel nearby where I got a room for $40 a night, which is cheap for the Maldives.  The room was nice, with a comfortable bed, air conditioning, hot water, and a television.

The Maldives are composed of 26 atolls and something like 1200 islands, 215 of them populated.  There are only about 380,000 people in the country, with about 100,00 in crowded Male, which is roughly rectangular and about a mile and a quarter from east to west and about three quarters of a mile north to south, so about a square mile in total.  The nation as a whole has only 115 square miles of land, but lots of ocean, running from about 7 degrees north latitude to 1 degree south latitude, about 475 miles in length.  Male is a little north of 4 degrees.  These islands, and the Lakshadweep Islands to the north and the Chagos Archipelago to the south, are mountaintops on a plateau that rises over 16,000 feet above the floor of the Indian Ocean.  Despite being the tips of mountaintops, the Maldives are the world's lowest country.  The highest natural point is only eight feet above sea level.

After checking into my hotel, I had lunch at a restaurant overlooking the wide lagoon near Male's northeast point, with great views of all the boat activity on the water.  The lagoon is huge, something like 35 to 40 miles from north to south and about 25 miles at its widest from east to west.  Male is on the southeast side of the reef.  The Maldives is 100% Muslim, and no alcohol is allowed in the country (although I did see bottles of wine on sale at the airport duty free shop in the departure lounge). At lunch I saw Maldivians drinking Red Bull and Coke, and I saw quite a few caffeinated energy drinks and lots of fruit drinks in fancy bottles on sale in stores.  Non-Muslim religious items are also prohibited, with signs at the airport to that effect.

After lunch I began a walk around town, passing the early 20th century palace of the former Sultan, now the President's residence, and a 17th century mosque made of coral blocks, plus the new big, gleaming white mosque with a golden dome built in 1984.  The afternoon was hot and humid, so I went into the National Museum in a big air conditioned building built by the Chinese and spent a part of the afternoon in there until it closed at 5.  The collection wasn't great, but there were some interesting items, including the old thrones of the sultans, carved chests, laquerware, weapons, and some skeletons of really big fish.  The old photographs were the most interesting items.  Just outside the museum is a park on the site of a former palace of the sultans, with shady trees, one two story old building, and a very small coral stone mosque with a metal roof.  Men on the streets were in western clothes, as were most women, though most had headscarves.  Some women wore long black Islamic robes.  I saw some photographs of Male in 1973 and all the men in the photographs were dressed in long dhotis, as in southern India. 

Not much is known about the early history of the Maldives.  It was Buddhist at one time, but the people were converted to Islam in 1153 by a Moroccan Berber.  It has remained independent for most of its history. The Portuguese conquered it in 1558 and set up a fort on Male, but in 1573 the soldiers in the fort were massacred in an uprising and the Portuguese never returned.  In the 18th century Malabaris from India conquered it, but only briefly before being thrown out.  In 1887 it became a British protectorate at the request of the Sultan who wanted protection from the traders from Bombay who were gaining political influence.  The Maldives became independent in 1965.  Tourism began in 1972 after the islands were discovered by divers and tourism has greatly transformed the county.  There are scores (well more than a hundred, I think) of luxury resorts, some with rooms for $4000 a night, and the Maldives derive a great amount of money from tourism.  Every luxury island is situated on a previously uninhabited island.  In 2010 the government decided to allow cheaper guesthouses on inhabited islands if the residents of those islands wanted them, so it is now possible to visit the Maldives without paying resort prices.

Leaving the museum, I walked to the northern waterfront and walked along the breakwater enclosing the fishing harbor, full of fishing boats.  At the end of the afternoon, boats were being unloaded of giant yellow fin tuna, some about five feet long.  I watched two being weighed.  One was over 40 pounds and the other 54 pounds.  Men were fishing from the breakwater and I saw hundreds of colorful reef fish just offshore. Several had been caught by the fishermen.  I saw tuna, pehaps 50 to 100 of them, being packed in ice on a boat to be taken elsewhere in the Maldives, perhaps to resorts.  The guys working on the boats were very friendly and posed for photos with their big fish.

I watched a beautiful sunset from the breakwater, with the sun setting through clouds and over big cargo ships anchored off Male to the west.  As the sun set, to the east a full moon was rising.  First time I've seen that since seeing the setting of the sun and the rising of the full moom at the southeastern tip of Moen (now Weno) Island in Truk (now Chuuk) Lagoon in 1987.  I walked around the port area some more after the sunset and after it became dark.  There was a lot of activity.  I stopped at one place to watch the evening news in English on television, delivered by a Maldivian in suit and tie.  The Maldives just had parliamentary elections in March and there are lots of political posters still on walls around town.  In almost all, the candidates are wearing ties.  Quite different from India, where no political candidate would dare to be seen in western garb.  I walked back to my hotel along the waterfront and ate dinner at the restaurant where I had eaten lunch, with a cool breeze off the water.

After sleeping in an air conditioned room for the first time in ages, I began another walk around town about 7:30 the next morning.  I walked again along the northern seafront, passing banks, travel agencies, and government buildings, including the President's Office in a new building.  A huge Maldivian flag, green with a red border and a crescent moon in the center, flies over an open square on the waterfront.  Just inland from the square is the big new mosque.  I walked past it to the park on the grounds of the old palace of the Sultans and then to the old Friday Mosque, built out of coral blocks and wood in 1656.  It is a lovely old building, though now with an ugly metal roof.  Sand surrounds the small mosque. I was allowed to go inside and was showed around by a friendly guy who told me he spends his days there reading the Koran.  The wood inside is finely carved, with designs and Koranic script, and the coral blocks also have intricate designs carved onto them.  A carpet inside has lines on it showing the direction to Mecca, as the building is oriented due west rather than towards Mecca.  It is believed it may be on the site of a former Buddhist temple. I left as the caretaker was about to vacuum the carpet.

Outside is an graveyard full of tombstones with intricate designs.  Pointed ones are for men and rounded ones for women.  A group of them had round gold plaques on them.  These are graves of the Sultan's family.
There are are several mausoleums made of coral block containing the remains of Sultans and their families. The Maldives was a sultanate until 1953 when a president replaced him.  The president lasted just a year and then was replaced by a new sultan, who reigned until 1968, when the presidency was reestablished by referendum.   The Maldives have remained a presidential republic since then, although a dictatorial one until there were free elections in 2008.  The man who won the country's first free election, however, was forced to resign in 2012 in a sort of coup.  He was allowed to run again in the 2013 elections, but lost by a small margin.

Outside the old mosque is a squat minaret almost as old, dating from 1675.  Across the street is the early 20th century Sultan's palace, now the President's residence and closed to the public.  Next to it is the mausoleum of the man who converted the Maldives in 1153.  He died in 1154.  These old buildings, once the finest on the island, are now dwarfed by multi-story buildings.  I saw a several photos of Male in 1973, before the tourism boom, and it looks like it had one three story building and only a few two story buildings. Trees dominated the landscape and there are no motor vehicles in sight.  Now highrise buildings dominate the landscape and the streets are clogged at times with cars and, especially, motorcycles.

About 9:30 I made my way to the restaurant where I had eaten before and ate a buffet breakfast for about $7, with a view of the lagoon.  The breakfast included eggs, pancakes, "chicken sausages" (hot dogs), fruit, cereal, and several Maldivian dishes, including one called mas huni, made of shredded coconut, shredded tuna, onion, and chili.

After breakfast I made my way back to the new Grand Mosque, gleaming in the mid day sun.  It has no decoration outside, but is very nice inside.  Only one man was praying inside the giant carpeted main hall, though there were a few other people seated out on the marble floors around the hall.  The mosque is said to have room for 5000 worshipers.  From there I walked south a few blocks to a very tiny old coral block mosque with the mausoleum of the Maldives' national hero next to it.  This mausoleum houses the body of the man who defeated the Portuguese in 1573 and then ruled as sultan until 1585.  I sat outside this small mosque as it filled with men for noon prayers.  Before entering the mosque they washed their hands, faces, and feet at water taps, except for one guy who did it the old fashioned way.  In the courtyard of the mosque is a well, with a couple of long poles with buckets attached nearby.  This old man used one of the poles to bring up water from the well, and then expertly held the long pole between his arm and body while he poured water from the attached bucket onto his arms, hands, feet, and face.  

From the mosque I continued walking south through neighborhoods with more multi-story buildings until I reached Male's southern seafront.  Male's streets certainly seem cleaner than any place in India.  The town seems prosperous, with lots of shops.  Most women wear headscarves, and some are fully clothed in black robes.  I think I saw only one with her face covered.  Many of the young women, although wearing headscarves (often a sort of bouffant version), were also attired in very tight, clinging clothes and wore a lot of make-up.

I walked west along the southern sea front, with a boat harbor the whole way behind masses of concrete tetrapods (those concrete blocks with four thick protrusions, each protrusion about three feet long) serving as a breakwater, the gift of Japanese foreign aid about 25 years ago.  At Male's southwest corner is another ferry terminal, from where I took a ferry about 2 p.m. across to the small island of Villingili, less than a mile west of Male.  The ferry took only five or ten minutes.  Villingili is a very nice island, much quieter and much smaller than Male.  It would guess it is about one sixth the size.  There are hardly any cars or motorcycles.  I walked along a sandy beach on its east end, facing Male, with a "No Bikini" sign, and then to the coral strewn southeast point, where I sat for a while and watched two guys fishing from the rocks.  Villingili (and Male) are on the southern side of North Male Atoll, and from the point I could see Male to the east and the northern islands of South Male Atoll to the south across the four mile or so wide strait between the two atolls.

Later I walked across the island to the west and then back to the ferry.  People were very friendly.  Almost all the women wore headscarves, but again some young women wore very tight clothes.  Along the streets were Maldivian chairs, made of metal bars forming a rectangle with rope or fishing line strung between the metal to form a sort of chair.  I sat in a few and they were cool and comfortable.  Similar chairs hang from trees.  Again, the little island seemed very prosperous.  There were lots of shady trees.

I took the ferry back to Male about 4:30 and walked to the northern seafront, stopping first at a colorful fruit and vegetable market and later at the fish market.  There were dozens of big yellow fin tuna on display, and I watched a guy expertly cut up several four to five foot long tuna for customers.  Another guy was cutting up smaller fish, about a foot long, for a customer.  I timed him and it took him a little less than a minute to gut and cut up each fish.  Their knives seemed to be very sharp.  Besides yellow fin, I recognized skipjack and barracuda.  I again watched the sunset from the breakwater, this time marred by burning garbage on the island hosting the garbage dump and a cement factory west of Villingili.  Sunset was at 6:10 and about 20 minutes later I spotted the red full moon rising as I walked back to my hotel.

The next morning I took a ferry from near my hotel at Male's northeast point to Hulhumale, an artificial island just north of the airport island.  Beginning in 1997 sand and coral were dug up and dumped onto the reef to create a new island about three quarters of a square mile in size to provide additional space for Male's burgeoning population and to provide area in case global warming inundates lower lying islands.  The ferry took about 20 minutes and upon arrival two modern, air conditioned, red buses were waiting, one for Neighbourhood 1 and one for Neighbourhood 2.

Rather than take the bus, I walked first to Neighbourhood 1 and then to the newer Neighbourhood 2, both full of multi-story residential units and with commercial buildings, too.  In addition, Neighbourhood 1 had maybe ten relatively inexpensive hotels along the beach along its eastern shore.  Lots of Chinese appeared to be staying there.  Despite the central planning layout of the streets and buildings, it seemed a pleasant area, especially Neighbourhood 1 with its older and bigger trees. The streets had few vehicles and people were curious but friendly.  A lot of construction was going on.  In the water off the white powdery beach on the eastern side played a group of completely clothed women in headscarves.   Off the northern shore is a resort hotel, which is planned to be replaced in the future when the artificial island is extended to that part of the reef.

I walked around for about an hour and a half and then took the ferry back to Male.  The lagoon was full of boats, including government ferries, dive boats, fishing boats, cargo boats, and others.  Just north of Male is a very small island, which we passed, that formerly served as the residence of the British Governor General.

I returned to the restaurant with the lagoon views for their buffet breakfast and then checked out of my hotel at noon.  Leaving my backpack there, I took another walk around town, heading towards the big building how housing the Supreme Court, and formerly the President's residence.  After the President elected democratically in 2008 took office, he decided the building was a little too grandiose.  I walked again to the fruit and vegetable market, where a guy gave me a lesson in the varying qualities of green and brown coconuts.  I also walked by two more very tiny, coral block old mosques.

About 2:30 I took an air conditioned, and very cold, taxi from my hotel to the ferry terminal at Male's southwest corner, at a cost of only about $1.30.  I was heading to the island of Maafushi about 20 miles away on the eastern side of South Male Atoll, another big atoll, though not as large as North Male Atoll.  The ferry, with about 50 passengers, most of them foreigners, left promptly at 3.  The ferry headed southwest from Male across the Vaadhoo Kandu, the channel between North Male Atoll and South Male Atoll, towards a break in the reef on the northern side of South Male Atoll.  We went through the break, past resort hotels on little islands on each side, and entered the big lagoon.  The ferry, once in the lagoon, headed southeast to Gulhi Island on the atoll's eastern side.  We docked there about 4:15, where most of the Maldivian passengers disembarked.  From there it was about 20 minutes more south to Maafushi.  My guidebook, dated 2012, says there are four guesthouses on Maafushi, but now there must be about fifteen.  I finally settled on one, for $45 a night.  The room was very nice, with a comfortable bed, air conditioning and hot water.  Maldivians seemed to think that all tourists need to have air conditioning and hot water.  I would have been happy with a fan and cold water, especially as there was always a nice breeze off the water.

I walked around the island a bit, through the sandy streets with almost no vehicles.  With fifteen or so guesthouses, people here are used to tourists.  I watched the sunset and then walked north along the little island's western edge and came across an outdoor restaurant with tables right on the water, and decided to have dinner there.  The spot was beautiful, as the western sky lit up with reddish streaks after sunset.  With darkness the stars came out and I could spot Orion.  The service and the food, however, were terrible.  After waiting about 40 minutes I got a plate of cold rice, cold french fries, cold potatoes and carrots, plus a piece of fish that, while I have never tried to eat shoe leather, I believe was a reasonable facsimile.

After dinner I walked to the eastern side of the island and saw the now past full moon rising just above the horizon through clouds, making a bright streak across the water.  I walked south and then north along the eastern shore and then circled back to my hotel.  The town was pretty quiet, with only a few people out on the sandy streets.  A wonderful breeze blew off the water from the west or southwest.

I got out about 6:30 the next morning, just after sunrise.  I walked to the island's eastern side, maybe a five minute walk through the little town from my hotel on the western side, to see the sun over the ocean.  I walked along the shore, past a big new mosque, to a prison covering the southern end of the island.  I've read this is the Maldives' biggest prison.  Interesting that the prison and the budget guesthouses are on the same island.  The prison had razor wire fences 15 feet tall, but looked rather nice inside, at least in one area with sand and palm trees.  A couple of the prisoners waved at me as I walked by.  I reached the western shore of the island just north of the prison and then walked back to my hotel, and then up and down the two main north-south arteries in town, wide sandy lanes with a few pedestrians and even fewer vehicles.

My hotel had a buffet breakfast, with eggs, beans, hot dogs, mas huni, and fruit, included in the room price.  After breakfast I walked around a bit and then spent several hours in a hammock outside my hotel and in the shade of palm trees reading my Sri Lanka guidebooks.  A consistent cool breeze blew off the lagoon from the west.  In the late afternoon I took another walk.  I watched the ferry, full of local people as the next day was Friday, come in from Male and then walked to the little beach near the northern end of the island. A palm thatch fence has been erected between the beach and the town and women tourists are allowed to swim and sunbathe in bikinis.  I would guess there must have been something around a hundred tourists on Maafushi. I watched the sunset from the beach and then had another terrible fish dinner at my hotel's restaurant.  After dinner I took a walk around town with a Swedish woman also staying at my hotel.  The moon had just risen over the ocean and the town streets had quite a few people walking around. 

The next morning I walked to the little beach about 7.  Little wavelets were lapping over the sandbank extending out from the beach into the lagoon.  I sat under the palm trees, one growing almost horizontally, for about an hour and then walked back to my hotel for breakfast.  About 10 I boarded a boat with ten other tourists for a snorkeling trip to various sites in the southern portion of the lagoon.  From Maafushi we headed west into the lagoon towards an exposed sand bank, where we disembarked, walked around a bit, and then snorkeled around the edges.  A couple of live aboard dive boats were also anchored there, as well as another boat or two like ours.  There were lots of colorful fish to be seen and it was wonderful to snorkel again.  We didn't spend a lot of time there as we reboarded and went to two or three other snorkeling sites around the lagoon before lunch.  The water was very clear and the fish and coral were spectacular.  The Maldives had a lot of coral bleaching after the El Nino year of 1998 caused water temperatures to rise and kill off algae and coral, but the spots we saw are still very beautiful, although with some bleaching.

Lunch was on an island with an abandoned resort hotel.  One of our guides told us the government closed it down in 2007 after it did some landfilling without approval.  Quite a few Maldivians were also enjoying the island on a Friday, their day off.  Fully clothed and headscarf wearing women were in the water.  Others were sitting under the palms, sometimes in those peculiar Maldivian chairs, tending their children and chatting.  A group of young people, teenagers or perhaps in their early 20's, were playing in the water and there seemed to me to be some unIslamic pre-marital touching going on, unless, of course, they were married.

We had a big red snapper, maybe two feet long, for lunch, along with rice, salad, and fruit.  After lunch we snorkeled at two or three other spots.  The last spot, called Banana Reef because it is shaped like a banana, was particularly spectacular, with very clear water and a strong current, and lots of fish and spectacular coral.  Other than at Palau, I've never seen such underwater beauty.  Our guides were disappointed that we hadn't seen any turtles, so we headed to one other spot, just off a resort, while one of them jumped into the ocean and scouted for turtles.  He didn't spot any, though, so we headed to our last stop, the inhabited island of Guraidhoo, south of Maafushi.  As we landed on the beach about five guys were cleaning octupi along the shore.  Guraidhoo is more populous than Maafushi (1800 people versus 1200), my guidebook says, and didn't seem as nice, with a lot more litter.  It has a lot of souvenir shops, which is probably why we stopped there.  We walked around the island and then boarded our boat just after the sun set, getting back to Maafushi just before dark.

I really enjoyed the snorkeling and now wish I had given myself a few more days in the Maldives and gone snorkeling a couple of more times.  It was relatively expensive, $65 for the day for each of us.  Actually, that is probably relatively inexpensive for the Maldives.  That evening after dinner with a couple of others from the snorkeling trip, I took a walk around the island and came across about six young men in white dhotis performing bodu beru in the courtyard of a guesthouse.  Bodu beru means "big drum," and is the traditional music of the Maldives.  The young drummers pounded away, sounding a bit African, while another young Maldivian guy and about five tourists danced.  I've read that in traditional Maldivian bodu beru the drumming and dancing may last all night, getting more frenzied as the night wears on.  Only men participate.

The next morning I again walked to Maafushi's little beach about 7 and stayed there for maybe an hour and a half.  It is mostly deserted in the mornings.  Four young Chinese women came along and spent a half hour posing and taking photos on the horizontal palm  tree, and that was amusing to watch.  I also watched the early morning ferry head off to Male, as I had the day before.

After breakfast I hung around the hotel until the afternoon ferry left at 1.  My flight to Sri Lanka left the next morning so I had to return to Male for the night.  The ferry was crowded, with maybe 80 passengers.  This ferry was considerably smaller than the larger one that had left in the morning.   The ferry took a different route back to Male than the one we had taken upon arrival.  It left the lagoon through a channel just north of Maafushi into the open ocean and traveled north outside the east side of the reef.  As we left the lagoon we passed by a resort that my guidebook says has rooms for $2500 a night and is favored by security concious Russian millionaires.  The ocean was calm, though the sky was cloudier than any other day previously during my stay.  There were even a few drops of rain.  Usually, days were sunny with just a few white clouds.  After the hour and a half trip to Male, another tourist and I took a cab to the hotel where I had stayed before.  She had a flight that evening, but I checked in. Male seemed like a big city after Maafushi.

About 4 I walked to Male's eastern side, as I hadn't yet been there.  A man made beach in a little cove was full of people sitting on the beach and swimming, the women again fully clothed.  I walked south past some nice recreational facilities and reached a couple of monuments near Male's southeastern point.  One featured a tetrapod on a pedestal, a testament to the Japanese aid program.  I hadn't meant to, but ended up circling the island's periphery.  Walking west along the southern shore I came to a swimming area inside the tetrapod breakwater and near the island power plant.  Lots of people were in the water.  I continued walking west along the long boat basin inside the breakwater, full of pleasure boats.  Along the way were little cafes with men and a few women drinking energy drinks and eating little snacks.

I reached the ferry terminal and turned north as the sun was dropping in the sky.  A lot of folk were along the shore.  Male's commercial port is at its northwest end and when I had walked past that, all the shops nearby, the vegetable and fruit market, and reached the breakwater with a view to the west, the sun had disappeared behind thick clouds on the horizon.  The sky was much cloudier than on previous days.  I watched a guy on one of the boats cleaning two very big red snappers, maybe three feet long.  Further along I saw six big yellow fin tuna being offloaded from a boat and placed, three at a time, on a cart to be taken to the fish market.  I got back to my hotel just before dark.

The Maldives turned out to be less expensive than I had expected.  I averaged less than $70 a day.  I should have planned an extra couple of days there.

April 7-13, 2014: Trivandrum, Kovalam, and Varkala

In Kanyakumari at India's southern tip on the morning of the 7th, I walked to the boat jetty before 8 in hope of taking a boat to the offshore islands with the Vivekanada Memorial Hall and the giant statue of Thiruvalluvar.  However, there was a huge line, with at least a thousand people, probably a couple of thousand.  So I gave that up and walked around a bit.  There were lots of tourists around, more than on the previous two weekend days.

I had breakfast and left on a 9:15 bus heading north, or rather northwest, parallel to the coast, to Trivandrum, 55 miles away.  Leaving town, we passed some small roadside machines with short conveyor belts, grinding coconut husks into a sort of pulp. The fibers of coconut husks, or coir, have long been made into ropes, so I guess this is the modern machine method.  First time I had ever seen that.  We passed a few salt pans, too.  The slow bus trip back into Kerala from Tamil Nadu took three hours, passing again through Nagercoil and with development along the road all the way.  I could see the Western Ghats to the east at times.  The sky was overcast, with some sun, and the air humid. Towards the end of the trip we had some rain.

Trivandrum's official name is now Thiruvananthapuram, but for obvious reasons the city is usually referred to by its old name, Trivandrum.  It is Kerala's capital, with about 900,000 people.  I checked into a hotel and then went to lunch in the air conditioned restaurant of a fancy hotel.  It was raining when I finished, so I sat in the hotel lobby reading the newspaper until the rain stopped.  The rain brought the temperature down.  I walked to the Sri Padmanabhaswamy Temple, dating from the mid 18th century.  Unusually for a temple in Kerala, it has a Tamil-style gopura gateway of seven tiers, about 100 feet high.  Non-Hindus aren't allowed inside, and Hindu men must wear a dhoti and no shirt.  The deity in the inner sanctum, Vishnu lying upon the coils of a seven hooded naga (serpent), with a lotus sprouting from Vishnu's navel ("padma" means "lotus" and "nabha" means "navel"), upon which sits Brahma preparing to create the universe, is said by one of my guidebooks to be "spectacularly large," made of over 12,000 stones brought by elephant from the bed of the Kali Gandaki River in Nepal.

The street leading to the temple's main eastern entry, with the gopura, has a tank of water to the north and a palace of the Maharajas of Travancore to the south.  The 19th century wooden palace was closed.  Along the street, facing the temple were five 20 foot or so high figures in red robes.  They looked like they might be made of wood or papier mache.  They represent the five Pandava brothers, the heroes of the Mahabharata. Arjuna, one of the Pandava brothers, is guided by Krishna, an avatar of Vishnu, serving as his charioteer.

The temperature in my hotel room when I went to bed that night was only 84 degrees, which felt cool compared to the past few days.

The next morning at about 8:30 I walked to the temple and the palace under a bright sun.  Lots of people, the men all bare chested and wearing dhotis, were heading into and out of the temple.  The palace, now a museum, was open.  You are conducted through it in a guided tour, but the guide moved so quickly that I lagged behind.  The old wooden palace was beautiful and very interesting.  A minder kept urging me to rejoin the group, but I ignored him.  There was lots to see in the two story palace, with carved wooden ceilings, doors and walls.  The floors were polished and black, as at the older palace in Padmanabhapuram to the south.  There were two thrones, one of glass and one of ivory.

Finally, a guide came and showed me around without the rest of the group and without hurrying too much. He told me the palace was built in the 1840's, taking a thousand workmen working every day for four years to complete it.  Then it was used for less than a year, as the Maharaja died early, at age 33 of a heart problem, and the palace was considered bad luck.  We went through several rooms, and the guide told me there are 60 more, including the sleeping quarters, the kitchens, and the servants quarters.  Long balconies on the second story have slat windows to let air in, and along the inside balcony are three are three protruding rooms, one for singing and dancing, one for meetings, and one, with a view of the temple gopura, where the raja would pray and write poetry.

After the tour inside the palace, I walked around the grassy grounds outside.  Lining the slatted walls of the second story on the outside were carved wooden horses rearing up.  There had to be well over a hundred of them all along the walls.  It was hot in the sun as I walked past some later built palace buildings, eventually being directed by a guard to a beautiful old building with a new museum (two years old, I was told) on the Travancore royal family, with scores of very interesting old photographs.  That museum was very interesting. Succession in the kingdom was matrilineal, with the Maharaja's oldest sister's oldest son succeeding him.  The Maharaja himself never married, at least not officially, and there are no photos of him with a wife, just of him with his sister or mother.

I walked back to the old palace and sat for a while under the veranda.  The museum director came up and talked with me for a while.  A specialist on the Vijayanagar Empire, he was very interesting.  By then it was past noon and very hot and humid.   I walked to the air conditioned restaurant in the fancy hotel for lunch.

About 2 I took an auto rickshaw north a mile or two to a park just north of downtown, where there is a zoo and several museums.  The museum I went to see is the formerly named Napier Museum in a building dating from the 1870's.  The collection was mildly interesting, with a temple chariot and Chola bronzes, among other things, but the building itself was more interesting, made of multi-colored bricks outside.  Inside, the wooden carved ceilings are 20 or 30 feet high.  There are also wooden walkways along stained glass windows.

The sky has clouded up, with some black clouds but no rain.  Coming out of the museum, I sat in the gardens for a while, enjoying the cooler air under the clouds, and then began the walk back to my hotel along Trivandrum's main street, lined with many attractive old colonial buildings. Colorfully decorated campaign vehicles passed up and down the street with loudspeakers blasting.  I entered the Victoria Jubilee Library, with an excellent collection of books in English, though they were all in less than optimal condition because of the humidity.  I visited whitewashed Christ Church, built about 1860.  I spoke with the friendly priest and then looked over the plaques on the walls and the gravestones outside.  I walked onto the grounds of the University College and then made my way to the Victoria Jubilee Town Hall, now a sort of crafts market. Finally, I reached the old Secretariat, white with domes and columns and lawns in front.  It is now the headquarters of the state government.  A few raindrops began to fall.  I got back to my hotel after 6.

The next morning was sunny and hot.  I took care of several errands, including buying air tickets for flights from Trivandrum to Male in the Maldives and from there to Colombo in Sri Lanka.  Soon after noon I took an air conditioned, very modern bus south to Kovalam on the coast, only about ten miles and thirty minutes away.  We passed lots of green trees interspersed with trees with yellow or violet blossoms.  Kovalam is a beach resort first discovered in the 1970's, but now clogged with hotels, restaurants, and the like.  Arriving at midday, though there was a nice breeze from the sea, I took a short walk along the beach and found a restaurant where I ate lunch while gazing at the sea.  Kovalam didn't seem very busy.  A lot of menu boards and other signs were in Russian.

I ate lunch and then sat in the restaurant reading and watching the sea until 4:30.  Then I walked to a lighthouse on a headland to the south, with views up and down the coast.  From there I walked back the way I had come and beyond, passing another, more prominent headland to another beach to the north.  This beach had little appeal, so I retraced my steps to the headland where I could look out from the cliffs to the sea.  I spent a half hour or so there enjoying the views and the breeze as the sun set.  At least 50 small fishing boats passed beneath me, heading north.  The sun set at almost exactly 6:30 and soon after I caught a bus back to Trivandrum.

The next day the streets were quiet.  It was election day in Kerala and a holiday.  I took a 9:50 express train north to Varkala on the coast, 25 miles away.  The train's first stop was Varkala, just over a half hour from Trivandrum.  (Varkala is only about 15 miles south of Kollam, where I had been a week earlier before heading over the Western Ghats to Tamil Nadu and then south to Kanyakumari at India's southern tip.) From the train station I took an auto rickshaw to a hotel and checked in, getting a very nice room for 500 rupees, a little over $8.  Varkala is another beach resort, situated on cliffs above the sea.  It is very popular, but this is now the low season.  After checking in I walked to the cliffs, less than five minutes walk from my hotel, and looked down at the beach and the sea.  The cliffs are reddish, made of laterite, and rise about 60 to 80 feet from the beach.  It is a very pretty area.  The cliffs are lined with guest houses, restaurants, shops, and other places catering to the tourist trade.

I walked north along the cliffs, away from the beach, passing all sorts of shops and restaurants and the like, until the path descended to lower ground along the sea.  I reached a grove of coconut palms, with views further north along the coast, but turned around and headed to a restaurant on the cliff top for lunch.  I stayed there until about 4:30, reading and watching the sea after lunch.  A good breeze came off the sea, with whitecaps out on the sea.  A woman said she has seen dolphins earlier, but I didn't see any.

I walked back to my hotel and about 5 it began to rain hard.  The rain clouds must have come from the interior.  It rained for about an hour, cooling the air considerably but leaving lots of puddles in the now muddy narrow lanes.  One of the nice things about Varkala is that the cliff path and many other paths are too narrow for cars.  After the rain stopped I walked south along the cliff top until the path descended to the beach at a gap between the row of cliffs to north, where I was staying, and the row of cliffs to the south.  I walked back along the beach, with more people, mostly Indians, on it than I would have expected after such a rainstorm.  I climbed up some steps to get back to the top of the cliffs.  The skies were still very cloudy, with a few raindrops.  At night hundreds of lights, from small fishing boats, speckled the sea.

The next morning I got out about 6:30, just at sunrise, and walked along the almost deserted cliff top along the path to the beach.  On the beach about six to ten priests were conducting pujas for worshippers.  Some of the priests had built, or had built for them, little platforms made of sand, perhaps six feet long, two feet wide, and a few inches high, on which they sat on red cloth.  There is a temple inland about ten minutes' walk away and I've read people come here to immerse the ashes of loved ones in the sea, but I didn't see that, or if I did I didn't know it.  What I did see were devotees kneeling in front of the priests as the priests conducted pujas, placing rice, sticks of incense, and more colorful stuff on banana leaves on the sand between the devotee and the priest.  The devotees, bare chested men in white dhotis and women in saris or salwar kameezes, then carried the banana leaves with their contents on top of their heads to the sea, where they turned around with their backs to the sea and dropped the banana leaves and their contents into the water.

I walked inland to the temple and its tank of water, but not much seemed to be happening.  Non-Hindua aren't allowed into the walled temple compound.  I walked back to the beach and watched the pujas until about 8:30.  By then the sun had lit up the beach and the priests or their helpers had erected multi-colored umbrellas to shield them from the sun.

I walked back along the beach, maybe a fifteen or twenty minute walk from end to end, and then ascended the cliffs via steps near the northern end. I ate breakfast at a restaurant with great views out to the sea, and a good breeze from the sea.  The middle, hot part of the day I spent in an internet cafe and then ate a late lunch of muesi, fruit, curd, and honey, by far the best muesli I have had in India.  Again, I enjoyed the sea views from the cliff top while eating.  I can see why people come here and stay for weeks, though the sales people can be a pain.

About 4:30 I walked north, along the cliff top and then down to the coconut grove along the sea, where I sat for a while. I saw a hawk or eagle or kite or some bird of that nature grab a fish from the sea with its talons and then fly back with it into the trees.  The fish looked about four or five inches long.  I walked further north, past a mosque and some upscale guesthouses, but the coastline was lined with imported boulders to prevent erosion and so was not as scenic as it would be otherwise.

I retraced my steps and eventually took the steps down the cliff to the north end of Varkala's main beach, called Papanasam Beach, where the pujas take place near the southern end.  Lots of people, both Indian and foreign, were still on the beach just before sunset.  The western sky was cloudy, providing only a few brief glimpses of the orange ball of the sun as it descended.  I noticed several small fishing boats heading out to sea at dusk.

At dinner time, many restaurants on the cliff top display fish, crabs, prawns, and even octopi in front to attract passersby.  I went to the place where I had eaten before, where a mahimahi, a red snapper, a barracuda, and a tuna maybe four feet long, were on display along with prawns and octopi.  I chose the mahimahi.  They cut a piece out, grilled it in butter with lemon and garlic, and served it with french fries and salad.  A delicious dinner, all for 350 rupees, an expensive dinner for India, but less than $6.  The sea was again filled with tiny boat lights.

The next morning I was out and about before 7.  I walked down the steps from the cliff top to the beach, where a couple of cricket matches were in progress on the sand.  I walked towards the puja area, but stopped before I got there to watch the fishermen on the beach.  Some were still coming in through the waves in their small raft-like boats.  These boats are similar to the ones I saw in Mamallapuram in Tamil Nadu, but made of fiberglass instead of pieces of timber lashed together by rope.  The size and shape were the same, though.  There were one or two made the old fashioned way.  Coming ashore, the fishermen (usually two to a boat) plopped down their piled up nets on the sand and proceeded to unwind them slowly, picking off fish and crabs and even the occasional lobster from the nets and piling them on pieces of plastic or cloth on the sand.  Dogs and crows stood nearby to fight over the discarded small fishes.  One net was full of spidery looking small crabs, too small for eating.  All were discarded and even the dogs and crows weren't interested.  I watched for quite a while, as did a crowd of Indian tourists.  The fishermen seemed friendly.

I walked on to the puja area and noticed some of the priests I had seen the morning before (a particularly fat one and a bearded one) weren't there.  I guess they took the day off.  I watched a while and then walked up the road onto the southern cliff, which is quieter and more residential than the northern cliff, but with no path along the cliff top for views out to the sea.  While walking around up there I kept hearing amplified singing from the direction of the temple, and later amplified drumming and pipe blowing.  I walked to the temple, which non-Hindus cannot enter.  I could look in through one of the gates and as I walked around the square temple enclosure I found out that it was quite easy to see over the low southern wall.  A big crowd had gathered inside, and I spotted a couple of bare chested, white dhoti clad drummers.  I walked a little further and spotted the temple elephant, with very small tusks, being washed with water from a hose by a bare chested, dhoti clad guy.  The elephant seemed to be enjoying it.  When the guy finished he left the hose running with the end propped up so the elephant could use its trunk to load up with water that he would then blow over his back.

I walked back to the low temple wall to see what might be happening inside the temple and when I came back to where the elephant had been, it had vanished.  Figuring it might have been taken for a walk, I walked around the temple compound looking for it, but didn't see it.  Finally, from the low south wall I spotted it in a dark area of the temple, surrounded by people.  I walked back to the beach, stopping on the way to take photographs of four old men sitting under the eaves of an old, red tile roofed building.  All four wore dhotis and were friendly.  They seemed very pleased to see their photographs.

By the time I had returned along the beach and ascended the steps at its northern end to the top of the cliff it was 10:30 and I was hungry and thirsty.  I drank more than a liter of water and then had another very good breakfast in a restaurant overlooking the sea.  The welcome breeze off the sea was strong, with whitecaps out on the sea.  After finishing eating, I sat there watching the sea for a while and then spent some time in an internet cafe before returning to the restaurant about 4 for a bowl of muelsi, fruit, curd, and honey.  I sat there until about 5:30 and then walked up and down the path at the top of the cliffs, first to the south, with views of the still crowded beach, and then to the north, with views north along the palm covered coastline. The sky was mostly clear, but the sun disappeared into haze before it reached the horizon.  Just after sunset at the north end of the path, where the path descends from the cliff to the palm lined coast, I watched maybe 50 hawks or kites or some similar bird gliding through the air above the palm trees.

For dinner I ate delicious red snapper, cooked in butter, garlic, and lemon, with french fries and salad.  Great food in Varkala.  There were no boat lights on the sea that evening.  I asked one guy and he told me that perhaps the fishermen were expecting a storm.  But there was no storm that night.  Another guy told me the fishermen are Christians, and take Sunday (and Saturday night) off.  He said there are much fewer fish in the markets on Sundays.

The next morning was humid, with little breeze.  I again walked down to the beach about 7 and watched the fishermen unloading their fish.  These ones are Muslim, I was told, but most fishermen are Christian.  I watched the pujas for a while.  The area was much more crowded than the previous two mornings.  Fifteen or twenty priests were set up under colorful umbrellas, and among them was one woman in a white and red sari.  I saw two men, bare chested and wearing white dhotis, kneeling in front of her while she conducted a puja that seemed similar to what the brahmin priests were doing.  First time I've ever seen a woman doing something like that.

The morning was hot, but I enjoyed watching the pujas.  Lots of worshipers were there, much more than on previous mornings.  One guy had a little clay pot placed on the banana leaf before the priest.  He took it on his head to the sea and tossed it in.  I wonder if human ashes were inside.  Another priest conducted a puja for a father and his maybe eight year old son, both bare chested and clad only in white dhotis.

I came back for breakfast on the cliff top about 9:30 and read the newspaper afterwards in the restaurant. There wasn't much of a breeze, especially compared to previous days.  No whitecaps were on the sea.  I walked up and down the path along the cliff top a little ways as the wind picked up a bit before noon.  I had one more muesli, fruit, curd, and honey and then took an auto rickshaw to the train station about 1.  If I didn't have a flight the next morning to the Maldives, I think I would have stayed a few more days in Varkala, despite the heat.  It is a pretty place, with its red cliffs (though marred with liter, as always in India), palm trees, and views out to sea.  Plus the fishermen and pujas on the beach are very interesting.  Despite the tourist season being over, there were still lots of tourists, both foreign and Indian.  Varkala must really be packed in the tourist season.  I saw some postcards of the cliffs and you couldn't help but notice how much more development there is on the top of the cliffs now than pictured on the postcards.

My train to Trivandrum left at 2:20, only 40 minutes late, which isn't so bad considering it was coming all the way from Delhi. It arrived in Trivandrum about 3 and I checked into the hotel where I had stayed before. The sky darkened and it rained hard about 6, but for only about 15 minutes, with drizzle for a while thereafter.  I did hear some loud thunder and saw some impressive lightning.  On my last night in India for a while I had a chicken biryani dinner.  The night air felt cool after the rain.

April 4-6, 2014: Kanyakumari

On the morning of the 4th in Kollam, while it was still somewhat cool, I  took an auto rickshaw to the Government Guest House in the old British Residency, said to be 250 years old.  The large old mansion has a Keralan gabled roof, whitewashed walls, a red tile roof, and pillared verandas.  Nobody was staying there and the manager let me look around.  He told me it had been built by Colonel Munroe.  (I've seen his name written also as Munro and Monroe.)  I wandered through big rooms with 25 foot high ceilings and tattered furniture.  In one glass cabinet were pieces of old chinaware.  I wandered around the verandas, both upstairs and downstairs and then walked around the grounds.  Behind the old Residency is the recently built new block of the Government Guest House, a hideous rectangular concrete building painted orange and lime green.  The contrast between the two buildings could not be greater.

I had a big buffet breakfast in a fancy hotel and then bought new sandals.  Both of my old ones were losing their soles.  I asked the shopkeeper to through away the old ones for me, and as I left the shop I noticed that he had already done so, tossing them onto the sidewalk outside the shop.

From Kollam, rather than continuing to head directly down the coast to India's southern tip, I decided to make one more crossing of the Western Ghats first.  I left on a 10:30 bus heading east to Tenkasi, 65 miles away in Tamil Nadu.  The two and a half hour trip initially passed through typical green Kerala scenery, with many towns and quite a few rubber plantations.  We didn't ascend much until we approached the state border, and then we climbed to only about 1200 feet through a not particularly scenic low pass through the Ghats.  At the top of the pass I could see the plains of Tamil Nadu below, and we quickly descended to them about 500 feet below.  Within a mile or two of the pass, the forest had already turned from green to brown, with most trees now leafless.  The plains looked very dry, too, though there were trees with green leaves, including lots of coconut palms.  But the grass was brown and there was even cactus.  Also, there were no political posters, quite a contrast with Kerala.  Perhaps that is because Tamil Nadu's election day is a few weeks later than Kerala's.

As we approached Tenkasi, the high ridgeline of the Ghats stood to the southwest, looking very dry on this side.  Entering town, I spotted the tall gopura (entry gate tower) of the temple, typical of Tamil temples.  I hadn't yet seen a gopura on a temple in Kerala.  My bus I was continuing to Tirunelveli, about 30 miles to the southeast, and I decided to head there with it.  The landscape on the way was dry with few towns.

Tirunelveli is a big city, with 400,000 people.  We arrived there after 3 at the new bus station several miles out of town, and I decided to head south to Kanyakumari at India's southern tip.  I had thought about staying in either Tenkasi or Tirunelveli, but neither looked very appealing.  To reach Kanyakumari I first had to take a bus south to Nagercoil, near the coast.  The 50 mile trip took about two hours, mostly on a four lane highway through hot, dry, flat country.  Big propeller type windmills were frequently sighted along the way. Approaching Nagercoil, we drove through a very low pass in the Ghats, only 200 or 300 feet above sea level, with scenic jagged hills on either side.  The hills to the north are higher, one reaching over 5000 feet only 20 miles or so north of India's southern tip.

From Nagercoil it is only about 12 miles to Kanyakumari and I arrived there about 6:30.  After checking into a hotel I walked, just after dark, to the southern tip of the subcontinent, about a ten minute stroll from my hotel past dozens of souvenir stands, a temple, and a memorial to Gandhi.  Lots of people, all Indian but for three other foreigners, were also out strolling around.  At the southern tip is an ancient stone pillared hall, the sculpture on it worn almost to disappearance by wind and water.  The sky was dark, but two islands just off shore were lit up.  One has a memorial hall celebrating Swamy Vivekanada and the other holding a 133 foot statue of the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar.  The Vivekanada memorial hall was built in 1970 to commemorate the spot where he swam to in 1892 to meditate, finally deciding to travel to the United States and speak on Hinduism at the Congress of Religions, part of the 1893 World's Fair in Chicago.  The statue, not particularly attractive, was built in 2000.  It is 133 feet high because the poet's most famous work has 133 chapters.

I enjoyed standing there at southern tip of India with a col breeze off the ocean.  It is just a bit north of 8 degrees north latitude and is considered the meeting place of the three seas, the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal, though to the west is not the Bay of Bengal but the Gulf of Mannar.  Though on the coast, it had been a warm day in Kanyakumari.  The newspaper the next day reported a high of 95 degrees.  Still, it felt good to be on the sea.

The next morning I was awakened about 5 or 5:30 by the Indians in my hotel getting up to go watch the sunrise.  I didn't get up until about 7:30.  Despite my being so close to the sea, the temperature in my room was 86 degrees.  I walked down to the southern tip of the subcontinent under an overcast sky.  Few people were there.  About 9:30, after breakfast and under now sunny skies, I walked to the boat jetty to take one of the boats to the islands offshore.  The line seemed too long, so instead I visited the Vivekanada Exhibition nearby, which turned out to be an excellent museum chronicling his journeys around India up to the time he left by ship in 1893, travelling from Bombay to Vancouver via Yokohama in order to attend the Congress of Religions in Chicago, where he was a big hit.  I wish it had continued beyond 1893 up to his death in 1902, at age 39.  His story was told on 41 panels in very well written English (and also in Tamil and Hindi) with very interesting old photographs of him and the places he visited.  I spent two hours there.  The caretaker kindly provided me with a plastic chair I could tote around and sit in while reading the informative panels, which sometimes were quite long.

By the time I finished it was noon and very hot in the sun.  I walked to the nearby Gandhi Memorial in a blue and white concrete building built to look somewhat like an Orissan temple.  It wasn't much, with a hall inside with a few of the standard Gandhi photos, now faded.  At one end of the hall is a plinth in which some of Gandhi's ashes were stored before being immersed in the sea.  On his birthday, October 2, the sun is supposed to shine on the plinth.  Nearby is a green concrete building commemorating K. Kamaraj, the main Congress leader in the south of India at the time of independence and in the early days after independence.  I think he served in Nehru's original cabinet after independence.  Later he was Chief Minister of Madras from 1954 to 1956 and then from Tamil Nadu, after it was created, from 1956 to 1967.  There was nothing inside but old photographs, but they were very interesting.  One showed him meeting Martin Luther King.  Others showed him greeting two very dour looking Russians, looking uncomfortable in suits and ties and hats.

After lunch, I spent some time in an internet cafe before returning to the southern tip about 5:30 to watch the sea, the crowds, and the sunset.  Quite a few  people were bathing in the water, some, mostly old folks, ritually after visiting the Kumari Amman Temple just to the north.  I watched one girl, perhaps about ten years old, have her more than shoulder length hair completely shaved off by a man in a dhoti with a straight razor.  That was very interesting.  Her three brothers, all with shaved heads, looked on.  After it was done, her father, with a full head of hair, gave the barber, who kept the girl's hair, stuffing it into a plastic bag, 100 rupees.  I asked a fellow onlooker why her head was shaved, and he said to sell the hair, but that seems unlikely.   The sun set into haze over the coastline to the west.  After dinner, I returned about 8:30 and almost no one was there.  The lights illuminating the memorial and the statue on the two offshore islands were now turned off.

The sky was overcast the next morning as I left on a bus at 8:30 heading northwest, paralleling the coastline, to the town of Thuckalay, 25 miles away.  On the way we passed several very full churches on that Sunday morning, with women in saris kneeling or sitting on plastic chairs on the entrance porches. The hour and twenty minute trip to Thuckalay passed through Nagercoil.  The rugged southern end of the Western Ghats could be seen to the east along the way.  In Thuckalay I took another bus a mile or two to the Padmanabhapuram Palace, residence of the Maharajas of Travancore from the mid 1500's until 1790, when the capital was relocated to more central Trivandrum to the north.  The princely state of Travancore included most of southern Kerala plus what is now the southern end of Tamil Nadu down to Kanyakumari.

I spent about three hours looking around the old wooden palace, with something like 14 buildings in all.  The narrow passages and small rooms were crowded at times, with big Indian groups.  The wooden carvings throughout, on ceilings and walls and pillars, were particularly interesting.  Some of the outside walls were of stone or plaster painted white, while others were made of slats of wood to let air in.  Some of the halls were very long.  Two were used to provide meals, each with room for a thousand diners.  One room had a particularly ornately carved pillar and all rooms had polished black floors, which I was told were made of egg whites and coconut shells, but they must have more in them than that.  The Maharaja's bed, a gift from the Dutch, was very beautifully carved.  One room was the former armory, with a watchtower at one end. Another hall had paintings in it, including one depicting the surrender of a kneeling Dutch commander before the Maharaja in 1741 and another a battle scene from 1790 with Tipu Sultan, the Tiger of Mysore, being carried off the battlefield in a litter after being wounded while trying to capture the Travancore fortress at Aluva, just north of Cochin.  Tipu Sultan is considered a national hero because he fought the British, but he also fought other Indian states.  Travancore and Cochin allied with the British, which eventually led to British supervision of their kingdoms.

The palace has a European style section, for the stay of European guests, and just outside the palace compound is traditional wooden house of what must have been a rich family, though the rooms and courtyards are very small.  Back in the palace again I walked along a stone pillared, open air hall with a very polished black floor, used for entertainment such as dancing and music.  A wooden room with wooden screens right next to the hall allowed the royal family to watch the entertainment without being seen.  At least one of the bas reliefs on the stone pillars was an erotic scene.

A museum is next to the palace, with stone and wooden sculpture, weapons, and one of those human shaped cages, labelled a "capital punishment cage," like the one I had seen at the Hill Palace of the Raja of Cochin. The sky was now sunny and the day hot.  I drank a liter of water and had an omelet and some potato chips for lunch before taking buses back to Kanyakumari, arriving after 4.

At 6 I walked down to the southern tip.  Lots of people were there, all Indians but me.  Quite a few pilgrims were bathing in the sea, including a couple of laughing, heavy women being rolled by the waves.  I spent an hour there, until it got dark, watching the people and the sea in the cool evening breeze.  The sun set just over the coastline to the west.

About 7:30 I entered the walled enclosure of the Kumari Amman Temple just north of India's southernmost point, and spent a half hour looking around.  It wasn't very crowded at the end of the day.  I had to take off my shirt to enter.  I checked out the carved stone pillars, many of them oily.  Some of the pillars were covered by gold plates.  The bare chested priests were friendly and I was permitted to stand before and look into the inner sanctum at the statue of the goddess Kumari.  An avatar of Parvati, Kumari was thwarted in her desire to wed Shiva and vowed to remain a virgin ("kanya" means "virgin").  She is reputed to have a jewel in her nose that is so bright that the door of the temple facing the sea is kept closed so sailors aren't distracted by its shine.  I did notice a gleam of light on her nose in the dark inner sanctum, with flames of oil lamps all around her.  I walked around a bit and then came back to the inner sanctum as temple priests brought platters of food for her.  Then the doors of the sanctuary were closed as about 20 of us watched. Shortly after, they were reopened.  I guess she was finished with her dinner.  The temple was hot and humid. It felt good to get out into the cooler night air. 

March 31 - April 3, 2014: Kottayam, Alleppey, and Kollam

In Kumily in the Cardamom Hills the sky was overcast at 7 in the morning of the 31st, but the sky soon cleared for another sunny day.  I ate breakfast in a rooftop restaurant and the caught a bus just before noon heading west through the hills to Kottayam, 65 miles away in the lowlands.  The bus descended and crossed the almost dry Periyar River before ascending again.  We passed tea and coffee and cardamom, and on one tea covered hillside I noticed pepper vines growing on all the tree trunks among the tea bushes.  Our route west took us up and down before making a long descent, dropping maybe 2000 feet or more, through a wide, long valley with hazy views.  The sky was getting cloudier and the air hotter as we descended.

In the lowlands the terrain was still rolling, with lots of rubber plantations and much other greenery, plus lots of towns.  We reached Kottayam, a town of about 180,000 that is a major rubber and spice center, after about three and a half hours.  It was hot.  I found a hotel and got a very hot room.

About 4 I took a bus about seven miles north to the town of Ettumanur, a half hour away.  We passed quite a few churches along the way, mostly new looking and big.  Many of them had posters of a white bearded, black clad Syrian Patriarch that I had read had died in a Berlin hospital recently.

In Ettumanur I walked to the Mahadeva Temple, which opened at 5.  The temple has two square walled enclosures centering on a round, wooden sanctuary.  To go beyond the second gate you have to take your shirt off, so I did so along with all the Keralan men.  The women enter fully clothed.  Many of the devotees were carrying oil offerings to pour into lamps, so the ground was particularly oily.  My bare feet were soon black on the bottoms.  It was hot inside, though with a welcome breeze if you stood opposite the entrance gate.  People looked at me curiously but were friendly as I looked over the intricate wooden carvings of figures, some of which were painted, on the outside of the small round, wooden sanctuary.  The figures include gods, men and women, and a frieze of lions and elephants fighting each other.  The temple is thought to date from the 16th century.  There is a decorated Shiva lingam in the center of the sanctuary.

Near the entrance gate of the outer wall are a couple of wall murals, one of Shiva dancing as Nataraja, the Lord of the Dance.  Another depicts a reclining god, but I neglected to check if it was Shiva or someone else.  I caught a bus back to Kottayam about 6 and spent a hot night in my stuffy hotel room, quite a change from the cool nights in Kumily and even chillier nights in Munnar.  When I went to bed soon after 10, my thermometer registered 90 degrees in my room.

The next morning when I got up at 7 the thermometer had plunged all the way down to 88 degrees.  I had slept well, though, under a strong fan.  I had breakfast at my hotel and then about 9 took a bus west to the village of Kumarakom and then beyond it a couple of miles to a bird sanctuary on the shores of Lake Vembanad, the lake I had first seen taking the ferry from Ernakulam to Fort Cochin.  The bird sanctuary is about ten miles from Kottayam, a half hour trip through green countryside.

I spent about three and a half hours in the sanctuary, three of them walking along a path through an old rubber plantation, with the trees still bearing scars.  I had hoped to get there earlier in the morning, but slept late in the heat.  Narrow, stagnant canals usually paralleled the path.  The more than a mile long path in places passed along some wider canals with canoes tied to the shores and also along the wide Kavanar River, with quite a bit of boat traffic.  The air was hot and still among the old rubber trees and other vegetation.  I heard some screeching and wondered if the noise was from chicks begging for food.  This is the breeding season for cormorants and egrets, but hatching isn't until later.  Finally I spotted what was making the noise, fruit bats.  I spotted one hanging upside down in a tree and then saw others.  

I walked past the trees with bats and reached the river, where I watched a woman cutting up fish on the opposite bank.  I saw some other villagers on the other side of the river, and houses.  Boats came by, including the kettu vallam, tourist boats modeled after old rice barges that used to ply the waterways of this part of Kerala.  They have black hulls made of oiled jackfruit wood and typically have palm thatched compartments on top.  They are big boats, 50 feet long or longer.  Now they are outfitted for tourists with air conditioning and cost $100 or considerabley more a night.  I enjoyed the trail, despite the litter and seeing no birds.  Eventually, I reached the lake, with a sign indicating Kochi (Cochin) was 48 kilometers, about 30 miles, away.  There was a very nice cool breeze off the lake.  I continued on the path away from the lake and passed  a couple of sunlit open areas above weed choked canals where there were dragonflies in abundance.

I reached the end of the path and turned back, stopping at a 20 foot high viewing tower nearby.  I climbed it and had an excellent view of maybe a hundred egrets on the tops of trees.  Some were in the air bringing bits of material for nest building.  They would land next to their mates and the two of them would arrange the new addition to the nest.  Some of the egrets were ruffling their feathers into a sort of spiky look, which I suppose is some sort of breeding behavior.  Among the egrets were a few herons, and beyond, in higher trees and in the sky above the trees, painted storks.  In another section of tall trees beyond the egrets were hundreds, probably thousands, of bats hanging from the branches.  I was told 5000 roost here.  The tower was made of metal and enclosed on three sides, so it was hot inside.  Nonetheless, I think I spent a half hour or so up there.

Walking back, I spotted two crows eating something on the path in front of me.  One flew away at my approach, but the other did not.  I stopped to watch and wondered what it was eating.  Eventually, I approached and the crow flew off.  It had been eating a baby fruit bat.  Its head, wings and claws were still intact, but its rib cage was exposed, showing what was left of red meat.

Butterflies fluttered along the path.  At one point I stopped to watch one and it fluttered up and down the path, passing within a foot of me several times, as if it was either oblivious of me or checking me out.  I came across the hordes of dragonflies again and saw more bats in the trees on the way back.  At the headquarters building I checked out the photos and map and then watched a film about the sanctuary.

I took the bus heading back to Kottayam but got off a couple of miles before the center and walked to the whitewashed Cheria Palli, which means "Small Church."  A friendly middle aged man showed me around inside the not so small church, built, he said, in 1579.  The walls and ceiling around the altar are covered with 16th century murals painted with vegetable dyes.  He also showed me stone cups for oil lamps on the wall outside and Hindu and Muslim influences on the architecture of the church.   A large oil lamp stand, with many cups for oil and wicks, stood in the church, as they often do in Hindu temples.  He told me this was a Syrian Orthodox Church, one of over a thousand in the area.  He said there is a also Syrian Jacobite Church, which is the one whose Syrian patriarch just died.  There seem to be quite a few denominations of churches in Kerala.  The biggest, I think, is the Catholic Church, dating from the arrival of the Portuguese.  There is also the Anglican Church of South India, dating from British times.  I've also seen Lutheran, Pentecostal, and Assembly of God churches, plus perhaps some others.

The friendly guy at Cheria Palli directed me to the nearby Vallia Palli, which means "Big Church," but didn't seem that much larger than the Cheria Palli.  Set at the edge of a hill with views down to the west, it, too, was whitewashed.  This church dates from 1550.  Set into the walls on either side of the altar are two stone plaques with crosses carved onto them.  One of my guidebooks says they are 8th century Nestorian crosses, while a brochure at the church itself called them Persian crosses.  One is original, brought from a much earlier church, while one is a copy.  The original one is thought to be the oldest Christian artifact in India.  Both have inscriptions in Pahalavi, the official language of the Sassanian Dynasty in Persia, while one also contains an inscription in Syriac.  The brochure traced the origins of the church to the migration to India of 400 persons, along with a bishop, priests and deacons, from Jerusalem and nearby places in 345 A.D.  The walls around the stone plaques were painted with colorful figures.

I took an auto rickshaw back to my hotel and hurriedly packed to get to the jetty for the scheduled 3:30 ferry through the backwaters to Alleppey, southwest of Kottayam.  The area from Cochin to the north to Kollam in the south is laced with interconnected lakes, rivers, canals, and other waterways, called the backwaters.  I've read that for most of the year the water is salty, from the ocean, but during the monsoon the tremendous flow of rainwater coming down from the Cardamom Hills flushes out the salt water for a few months.  I had taken this ferry in 1979 and enjoyed the slow, interesting trip on the water.  But I found out the ferry no longer leaves from Kottayam but from a spot about six miles from town on account of new bridge construction that the ferry cannot pass.  So I ended taking an auto rickshaw for 160 rupees to the departure site in order to take the ferry to Alleppey, the fare of which is only 18 rupees.  The boat was empty when I arrived at 3:30 and had only five passengers when we left at 4.  There are seats for about a hundred people in the wooden boat.  We chugged west down a narrow canal for about 15 minutes before entering a wider canal.  The bridge construction had cut off the most interesting part of the trip, past houses and everyday activity along the narrower canal.  Still, I enjoyed the trip.  A sign as we entered the larger canal said it was only 16 kilometers (10 miles) to Alleppey.

The canals ran fairly straight but we made several turns, generally heading southwest.  There were a few houses, some desiccated rice fields, and quite a few birds to be seen.  Water seemed to be almost everywhere.  There were also lots of those rice barges turned tourist boats, usually with tourists lounging on the front open, but covered, decks.  Some of the boats looked very fancy.   Eventually, we reached the southern end of Vembanad Lake and crossed it to the southwest, entering another canal and then heading south to Alleppey. Just before reaching Alleppey we passed hundreds of the rice barge turned tourist boats tied up to the shores.  I have read that there are 400 to 500 of them in Alleppey, and that was several years ago.  Reaching Alleppey just after 6, the ferry cruised up a narrow canal bordered by trees and buildings and docked in the town center.  I found a good hotel nearby.  Cheap hotels certainly are better in the south of India than in the north.  Alleppey (now officially named Aleppuzha) is a big city, with almost 300,000 people, but the old center near the canal seems seems more like the center of a small town.  The town was hot and humid. My thermometer indicated 90 degrees in my room at bedtime, but I again slept well under a good fan.

The next morning was hot, too.  My room was 86 degrees, but it was cooler outside.  I left for a walk before 7, first heading to the jetty to see about ferry boat schedules and then through narrow lanes past residences in the neighborhood near my hotel.  I was sweating before 8.  After breakfast I again walked to the ferry jetty and got some more reliable ferry information.  After lunch I departed on the crowded 1 p.m. ferry headed east to the town of Changanassery.  Twenty minutes later it was half full as many passengers got off at spots just outside of Alleppey.  The narrow channels near the town passed homes and were very interesting, but eventually we reached the wider channels, passing dry and sometimes even burnt rice fields. We skirted the southeast corner of Vembanad Lake and then headed southeast to Changanassery and eventually into narrower, palm fringed channels, passing through several villages.  There are quite a few churches and temples along the way, but I saw no mosques.

Lots of birds, egrets and herons and cormorants, were to be seen, along with a couple of bright blue kingfishers.  At one point an enormous number of ducks were huddled together, being herded, (or flocked?) by two boys standing upright in little canoes and using poles to keep the ducks together.  There were hundreds and maybe more than a thousand ducks in that mass.

Nearing Changanassery the channel became choked with vegetation, with pretty lavender flowers scattered on top of the mass of green vegetation.  The ferry plowed right on through, reaching the Changanassery dock after a three hour trip from Alleppey.  The channel ended there, in a wide, completely vegetation choked basin with old warehouses on one side.  Changanassery's old downtown is situated next to the boat basin, with lots of crumbling old wooden buildings.  I enjoyed looking around, stopping at a little shop that sold bundles of rope made from coir, shredded coconut husks.  An open air market under a roof sold all sorts of dried fish, most preserved in salt.  Another shop had dozens of stalks of green and yellow bananas either stacked up or hanging from the eaves.  People were friendly and curious.  I got the impression not too many tourists make it there.

I walked to the bus station somewhat less than a mile away from the ferry terminal and on the way the town turned into the typically ugly Indian town.  I took a bus back to Alleppey, about an hour's ride, passing alongside and over canals along the way.    Back in Alleppey I walked to a pedestrian bridge over the main canal, a little east of the ferry dock, and watched the boats come and go until it got dark about 7. There were quite a few ferries, some very full of people heading home from work in town.  Herons flew over the canal until after sunset, and a crescent moon showed up in the western sky.

The next morning about 7 I walked back to the bridge to watch the ferries and birds.  Sunrise is a little after 6:30 and by 7:30 the sun had cleared the clouds to the east, making it hot on the bridge.  I left and again walked through the neighborhood near my hotel and then had breakfast.

At 9:30 I left Alleppey on a bus headed south to Kollam, 50 miles away.  The backwaters continue all the way to Kollam and while public ferries no longer travel the route, a tourist ferry does, taking eight hours. However, now in the tourist low season it does so only every other day and I didn't want to spend another day in Alleppey.  The bus trip took a little more than two hours, with roadside development and towns all along the way.  We crossed waterways several times and at one time could see the ocean beyond a gleaming white sand bar at the end of a canal.

Kollam was formerly know as Quilon and has about 400,000 people.  At one time it was a great port, trading with China and Arabia and elsewhere.  I checked into a hotel and searched for a place to eat in the fiercely hot midday sun.  The newspaper the next day reported that that day's high was 99 degrees.  After lunch I went to the tourist office on Astamudi Lake at the northern edge of town, where the tourist ferry from Alleppey docks.  One of my guidebooks had recommended their backwater canoe trips. Nobody else showed up for the trip, so I had to pay 1000 rupees, about $16-17, rather than 500 rupees, but the trip was very good.  An auto rickshaw drove me about 15 miles to Munroe Island in Astamudi Lake. We made a ferry crossing, on a ferry just large enough to carry two cars and three auto rickshaws, along with motorcycles and people, to an island next to Munroe Island and then crossed over to Munroe Island by a short bridge.  The islands were very green, with shorelines lined with coconut palms.  It took us more than an hour to get to Munroe Island from Kollam.

Once there, another guy took me through narrow waterways on the island by canoe for about two hours.  At times the canals were just barely wide enough for the wooden canoe, which he poled.  The canoe was just high enough to fit under the sometimes very low cement bridges we had to pass under.  We both had to sit very low beneath the gunwales of the canoe not to hit our heads.  We passed simple homes with women cleaning clothes or pots and pans or doing other chores.  An old man led his cow, taking it somewhere. There were quite a few ducks here and there, swimming away from us and eventually climbing ashore when we got too close.  In the skies and on the trees were herons and egrets and other birds, including brahminy kites, with white heads and looking a little like bald eagles.  Everything along the banks was very green, a very pretty journey.  The boatman pointed out cashews growing on a small tree along the bank.  He also pointed out tapioca plants and vanilla vines.  Coconut palms were everywhere.

One area was full of ponds where tiger prawns are raised.  Typically, the ponds are covered with nets to keep birds from eating the prawns, but one pond had a rope across it with all sorts of different plastic bottles tied along the rope. I asked why and the boatman told a little girl to pull the rope.  There were rocks in the bottles that rattled, another way to keep away the birds.  The little girl was stationed at one end of the rope to watch for birds.

After the canoe trip, we headed back to Kollam, arriving about 6:30.  The restaurant where I ate that evening had a cricket match on, with most commercials political advertising for the Congress and BJP parties.  I again slept in a hot hotel room, but again with a good fan.