South India - Goats and Elephants

After sadly tearing ourselves away from Rishikesh and the guys there it was back again to the Del(hi) Hole. We organised our visas for China and made arrangements to head down to south India for a couple of weeks. Landing in Chennai, formerly Maddras, we proceeded to grab a bus to Pondicherry. It makes a distant news-reel tragedy seem more real when you actually speak to people impacted, our rikshaw driver in Chennai (Anthony) avoided being wiped out by the tsunami only by about 30 minutes. Just after he'd been in a coastal town with a customer, it came through and wiped the place off the map - his friend wasn't so lucky. Along the south east coast you could also see where villages had recently been rebuilt.

Local buses like the ones we used in Rishikesh and Chennai are a real hoot in India, not a modicum of leg room (suspension and smooth roads are clearly an optional extra not often selected) meaning you get to tick the boxes marked "concussion" and "cramps". This passenger here was remarkably chipper given the ride experienced, personally I think she'd been giving the Kingfisher beers a nudge.














Pondi was an enclave of the colonial French. There is a strong French influence on architecture, language and food, happily due to different taxation levels alcohol was always much cheaper in the south compared to the north. Unfortunately not knowing too much French, it appears Gwen accidentally ordered a plate of food poisoning from one of the restaurants in town.

Pondi is quite a pretty town, but the beaches were a bit ordinary. We hired a couple of scooters here which made getting around a lot easier. Once I'd worked out to let go of the throttle when trying to brake (the whole do two things at once conundrum) - narrowly avoiding parking the scooter into various walls and cars - I found they had a surprising amount of poke - much to the annoyance of some four wheel drivers. Everyone hates getting dragged off by a scooter - or is that just me?

We found out that a guaranteed way to freak the locals out is to actually use an indicator. They stop, stare, whisper among themselves and generally try to figure out what the hell that little flashing light is.

From Pondi we went to Cochin, and then to the island of Fort Cochin which was experiencing somewhat of a slow tourist period after an outbreak of some disease or other - would have been nice to know that beforehand! Fort Cochin has a strong Portuguese influence along with a large Christian population resulting in some uniquely styled churches and religious statues.Somehow the Portuguese influence on the people is matched by a Japanese influence on the local goats, Gwen named this one Mizuiko San, which seemed 100% apt...


















We became good friends with a man, Joseph, who had driven our rikshaw on our first day in Cochin, catching up with his family a couple of time during our stay. By Australian standards their house was very rudimentary (but note the Ken Done art on the back wall), with 3 generations sharing it, but they were a very happy family, working hard to build a better future for their two daughters.














On one particular day Joseph took us swimming in a remote lake about 60k's east of the city. Luckily, as you can see, Gwen was able to recover the car keys and from there we went the back way round into the Periyar Zoo, walking along the banks of the river and then getting a canoe taxi.
This was probably the single most enjoyable day of the trip, it was the kind of 'out of the grind' type experience that really stands out amongst many highlights. Some of the animals seemed just as interested in us as we were in them.

To be this close to an elephant was amazing, their physical presence and intelligence, the dexterity of his trunk was like a sensitive hand, nose and enormously strong arm rolled into one. This was a young male, about 11 years old, there was bigger female who was 20 something but she didn't seem to be in a mood for tolerating a couple of crackers like us.
Below is a picture of Gwen praying that the elephant would eat me...

...and here's a picture of the elephant eating the trainer by mistake as his grasp of English wasn't crash hot.
Cochin is also home to the world's funkiest truck. For starters it was a type of truck that I only ever saw in Cochin. This particular beasty was all wood, including the tray, every inch was beautifully hand carved and hand painted with a hippy/Taj Mahal motif.

The pictures just don't do it justice...the guy driving it definitely knew it was cool wheels as well.

Speaking of wheels I was lucky to find a job I was actually qualified for in Fort Cochin. This was Shanu's fully accessorised rickshaw, replete with strobing lights, sound effects, chrome wheels and buttons galore - very cool. He agreed to lease it to me, unfortunately negotiations broke down over my demands for a shag pile interior and DVD player.