The Parts of India That We Began to Fancy

Her husband was murdered by his business partner for 40,000RMB (that’s about 1000USD), and because of a bribe the murderer’s sentence was only 1 year in jail.  She was left with 2 boys aged 7 and 9.  Being in the Brahmin caste, she was not allowed to work and for 45 days after the death of her husband, she had to cover her head up entirely with her sari.  There was no money for her and her children so her boys ended up secretly collecting travellers’ laundry from guest houses for her to wash, just so they could afford to eat plain naan with chilli sauce to ease their hunger.  By chance, a foreign traveller came upon her cooking and enjoyed it very much; he suggested she teach people how to cook.  So she did.  She remembered very clearly that her first students were an Australian couple, and since she spoke no English she just used hand gestures to communicate with them.  Another traveller offered to help her print her extensive list of recipes in English.  Others came along to translate into their own languages and one of them designed a website for her.  She eventually learned English from her students and her sons.  It’s been 4 years since her first cooking class, and she is now considered wealthy in her community.  She helps the poor and she helps travellers buy spices from the market for the “Indian” price since it was Westerners who first helped her.  This is the story of Shashi, our cooking class teacher in Udaipur.  Her English was not fluent but her usage of simple words, direct and to the point, brought tears in my eyes when she told her compelling story.  We spent 5 hours with her in her cozy 25 sq ft kitchen and learned to make almost all of the northern Indian food that we see in restaurant menus: masala chai, pakora, paneer, naan, curries, you name it.  We loved every single dish we made.  We (mostly Eug since he’s a more talented cook) will make some for you guys when we get home. 

After two weeks of experiencing the infamous madness of India that you hear about, we decided to chill for the rest of the trip.  What better place to start than the most romantic city in the country, Udaipur.  Besides taking Shashi’s cooking class, we did one day of sightseeing to see the City Palace, Rajasthan’s largest palace overlooking Lake Pichola.  We spent some time in the City Palace Museum where there were collections of weapons, textiles, mosaics, glass and mirror work, and ornamental tiles.  There are two islands on Lake Pichola, on one of which stands the romantic Lake Palace Hotel (picture above).  It was a palace built by a maharaja in 1620 and it is said that the Taj Mahal was inspired by this palace.  Most of the guest houses in Udaipur are around the old city by the lake, so most of them have rooftop restaurants with a breathtaking view of the floating Lake Palace.  We chilled at the rooftop of our guest house a couple of times to soak up the serenity of this view and forgot all about the hectic week before.  It was without doubt a relaxing break. 

We initially planned to go down to the south Indian states Goa and Kerala for the remainder of our time in India.  However, after doing some research we decided to skip Goa since it’s now apparently another overly commercialized tourist location.  So we chose Kerala and the Andaman Islands instead to finish off our trip in this country.  We wanted to do a yoga ashram in Kerala, but we didn’t want a fixed schedule that started at 5:00am daily.  And I bet Eug wouldn’t be able to keep a straight face around a roomful of devoted yogis chanting and singing.  So I found a yoga homestay instead.  It was in a very small town 4 hours away from Kochi called Kuttikkanam.  It wasn’t even on any of our India Lonely Planet maps.  The homestay was on top of the hills nestled amongst tea and rubber plantations.  It’s a nice big house surrounded by gardens of vegetable and fruit trees.  The amazing host and owner, Matthew, is an Indian originally from the area who lived in New Zealand for 15 years.  His cook made us a fantastic variety of south Indian meals for all the 6 days we were with them.  They were vegetarian but they made chicken for us as well.  Matthew taught us how to eat the Indian way, which is to eat with our right hand.  It wasn’t hard to eat the naan, roti, or chipati, but it got tougher as we moved onto the rice.  It was fun to eat with our hands and it was interesting to feel the texture of the food on the fingertips.  Matthew also taught 2 yoga classes daily.  We were the only guests staying with him then so we were the only students.  I’ve taken many yoga classes before but this was my first time having almost 1-on-1 instruction.  Not only did Matthew tailor make the classes just for us, he also corrected our postures.  On his own vacations he likes to go to monasteries and ashrams to meditate and see what some self-proclaimed gurus or monks have to offer.  For those who want, he has no problem discussing issues of spirituality, meditation, or ways of living your life, without all the weird stuff that sometimes can be associated with those subjects.  He also has a nice little library devoted to those topics.  We really appreciated our time here so if you want to check him out he’s at www.mundax.com.

One day we took the local buses to Kottayam to take the public boat to Alleppey on the famous Keralan backwaters.  We paid 10 Rupees each (that’s about 25 cents) for the 2.5 hour ride.  There are tourist boats that you can hire for 1000 Rupees for the same route, or houseboats for 2 days around the same area for 20,000 to 40,000 Rupees depending on how nice the boats are.  We were glad we did the 2.5 hour public boat because we got to see the local villagers hopping on and off as we went along.  The backwaters were peaceful and really nice, understandably making them the number one tourist attraction in Kerala.  The bus rides were amusing and adventurous too.  We received countless head bobbles as the locals hopped on and off the bus walking by us.  And on the way back, we were pointed to the wrong bus station when making a transfer to get back to Kuttikkanam.  Long story short, the helpful locals led us back safely.  Two men took us all the way back to our stop.  They told us to take the seats right behind them to make sure we were ok.  They didn’t speak much English but they tried to make conversation with us every now and then.  A few passengers sitting close to us dropped by and told us approximately how far we still needed to ride before they got off the bus themselves.  We are really grateful for how helpful and friendly everyone was when we needed help.

Kerala is also famous for its ayurvedic treatments.  In Sanskrit, Ayu means life and veda means knowledge.  Matthew briefly explained the ayurvedic massage and how people either love it or hate it.  Since we were already there, we were obliged to experience it for ourselves.  We did it at a famous ayurvedic hospital close-by.  A doctor first checked our blood pressure and weight to make sure we were suitable for the one hour ayurvedic massage, then we were led to 2 separate rooms.  I had a girl masseuse, and Eug had a smiley little guy masseuse (I’m sure you know where this is going).  I was told to change into something that looked like a shoelace with an attached paper-thin piece of cloth down the middle that was about the same length and a third the width of a standard hand towel.  I was completely lost as to what to do with it.  Turned out that I was supposed to tie the string around my waist with the paper-thin piece in front of me, then loop it back and tuck the end of it to the string on the back my waist.  It worked out fine for me but in Eug’s words, it was kind of like a sumo wrestler outfit that doesn’t really cover your package.  In this new outfit, I was asked to sit on a stool for the head and face massage.  By this point I was really laughing inside just thinking about Eug in the other room experiencing the same thing but with a dude.  Then I was asked to lie on the massage table facing down and that’s when she untucked the paper piece on my back.  I was on the verge of cracking up very badly thinking about Eug lying face down with his exposed naked butt.  She poured warm oil all over my back and started the massage which was really not a massage but more like a rub down.  Then she asked me to turn around to lie on my back and that was when I couldn’t control my laughter anymore, prompting my concerned masseuse to ask if I was ok.  Finally, after an hour we got to shower the grease off.  She told me to sit on a stool, but I almost slipped off because I was so oily.  She then showed me 2 buckets, one big and one small.  She took the small bucket and scooped warm water from the big bucket and poured it on me.  That’s when it clicked.  We’ve been seeing the big and small bucket combination in the washrooms of the places we stayed at.  I thought they were for cleaning the washrooms, but they are really for showering!  Anyway, when I met Eug outside, he had the same look as when he came out of the Hamman in Essaouira, Morocco (if you remember from our Morocco entry).  I don’t think he’ll be doing the ayurvedic massage ever again.

We thoroughly enjoyed our stays in Udaipur and Kuttikkanam.  Thanks to Shashi and Matthew and the people in the small town in Kerala, we began to fancy India.