palaces, dancing (of course), and backwaters

It's been a whirlwind of a week! We ended up foregoing the trip to Bangalore (we'll be hitting up the city on 2/22 for Jake's haiku workshop and another music festival), and went straight to Mysore to eat some dosas, check out the famous fruit and veggie market, and see the maharaja's palace. Initially, Mysore was a bust. We took an overnight train and arrived very groggy and a little delirious in the early morning. This visit also began our bad advice stint from Lonely Planet. After seeing two hotels that were pretty awful, we finally let the rickshaw driver take us to the hotel he recommended (usually not a good idea to do, but we were out of options and VERY tired), and we crashed. After rest, we checked out the amazing fruit and produce market where we ate a whole papaya, tried custard apples (really gross looking fruit that tastes like a banana and apple pie mix!), and talked to some of the vendors. Also tried some Mysore Pak, which is the famous sweet of Mysore made entirely of ghee (clarified butter) and sugar. Yum... The next day we weren't feeling Mysore too much, since it is INCREDIBLY touristy (or at least we were too tired to find the non-tourist route). Interestingly enough, there were almost no couchsurfers or hospitalityclub members in the city, which is strange for a big place. That said, compared with Mumbai and Pune, it felt like no one actually lived there but people selling things. However, Mysore took a pretty incredible turn when we found a park to spend the day reading, drawing, and practicing yoga. We hadn't sat in grass since we began our travels!! India is really short on green spaces, particularly public green spaces, so it was wonderful to sit in the park for the day. We were feeling really sleepy, but we managed to convince ourselves to take a tour of the maharajah's palace, which was an excellent decision. There were a ton of tourists, but most of them were Indian families and school groups which was really sweet. The palace was GORGEOUS (couldn't take pictures). It was so grand and intricate and delicately painted. Actually, I wrote a haiku:

Feeling like tourists
Guess we'll go to the palace
Dance!! Travelers once more

When we stepped into the main ballroom, Jake and I couldn't help but dance. We started with a little waltz and then moved into some contact improv. Though it was only for a few minutes, it was pretty amazing, and we managed to stop traffic in the ballroom almost completely. A few people came up to us afterwards and told us they were so happy to see us dancing- it was such a sweethappy moment! That night, after watching the sunset from a rooftop restaurant, we walked by the palace again to see it lit up (that's the first photo up top). Every Sunday from 7-8pm, the palace is lit up with thousands of lights (I've never seen so many lights in my life! The photo is just of the archway, not even of the palace itself!) and a band plays. It's so festive and there are tons of people there, it was so beautiful!! We could only stay for a few minutes because we had a bus to catch, but we left Mysore on a really high note.

Overnight buses are not my favorite mode of travel, let me just put that out there. Jake had taken sleeper buses in China, so he knew what to expect, but apparently we were only on a half-sleeper bus, which I've learned means you can only half-way fall asleep!! Basically, the chairs reclined a bit and that was it. We left at 8:30pm and arrived in Cochin, Kerela, our next destination, the next morning. We were absolutely delirious when we got off the bus, and then we had to take ANOTHER bus to Allepey (about 2 hours) where we were to meet our friend Maya from Vassar and her friend Eva from home (Jake was totally psyched to be spending the next few days with THREE Jersey girls!). Well, we made it, met up with Maya and Eva, and a few hours later we found ourselves relaxing on our very own houseboat on the backwaters of Kerela. I couldn't believe we were going to spend the next two days with a personal chef, navigator, and delightful views of the water and villages. It was relaxing, delicious, and really wonderful to catch up with Maya and meet Eva!


This first photo is the view from our houseboat (that's Maya on the front of the boat, and Eva sitting near the back). The Kerelan backwaters are kind of like Venice. Everyone lives on the canals, and takes little canoes or ferries everywhere. We passed a few schoolferries (as opposed to school buses) with lots of kids on their way to class! Sometimes we passed through villages, sometimes we were surrounded by other houseboats, and sometimes we were completely alone on the water, which was amazing.
Jake made a makeshift fishing pole, but couldn't catch anything. He found the houseboat for us through couchsurfing, and we managed to get an incredible deal for the two days, which was really nice considering houseboats are usually really expensive. There isn't much else to say about our houseboat trip, since all we did was relax, read, sleep, and talk for the 2 1/2 days we spent floating on the water. It was a trip not being able to move more than 10 feet for a few days, and though I was really happy to be on the boat, I was also happy to reach land and walk once our trip was done. From Alleppey we took a bus back to Cochin where we figured we could stay for a few days before Maya and Eva had to take trains to Mumbai and Chennai respectively. We spent the first couple of hours in Cochin looking for a place to stay and realizing that Cochin is super expensive! Finally, through an amazing couchsurfing link that Jake had made a couple of weeks ago, we were told we could stay in the Regional Sports Centre in the center of the city. That's right... We're staying in a sports complex. The jock and hippie in Jake is fully satisfied!! Amazingly, the room is really nice and spacious (and cheap!) so it's been a great base for us for the past couple of days. Yesterday, we wandered around Fort Cochin (the tourist section of the area) and visited tons of little shops for most of the day. We ended up wandering down this alley at one point and the smell of ginger was so strong, it was incredible. This final photo is of the ginger drying with lime powder. There are three types of ginger (the brown, the gray, and the white), and it was really amazing to see it all laying on the ground! Turns out we had stumbled upon a women's cooperative that sold tea, nuts, fruits, soaps, and other products. The women took us upstairs to this tiny little room and let us sample everything before we bought a whole bunch of stuff (supporting an excellent cause!). It was a really nice find... At night we went down to the fishing nets, picked up a huge white snapper caught just a couple of hours ago, and then brought it to a restaurant to be grilled. It was delicious!!!

Another day or two in Cochin and then it's off to tea plantations and back to the beach for awhile after that... Kerela has been good so far!