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In India, every day is a surprise… “Expect the unexpected”, I may have said this before, but it is so true. Since we are living in Trivandrum for a while now, we have the opportunity to experience some of the many festivities. Onam already seems some time ago, and last Monday we celebrated the anniversary of Gandhi. As Anneke noted, it is strange to think that we do that together with about 1/6th of the world population. In between these two festivities, there were some more processions, which we only saw by coincidence, but that were equally nice to see: with people dressed up in their best traditional Kerala clothes, procession vehicles (beautifully decorated trucks with statues, which have to drive backwards all the time) and some elephants…

Two months India

I can hardly believe it is already two months ago that I arrived in India. Although so many things happened, it seems just a few days ago. My hair, though, proves that is has been a while: from black, it turned to brownish with a copper tint and with my own light-brown where it is growing.

Two months ago, that also implies that we arrived in Trivandrum one month ago: one month of internship in which we haven’t accomplished a lot of things, contrarily even. With all these luggage problems, it was quite understandable we didn’t do that much the first weeks, and when it was finally sorted out, it was too close to Onam to start our own project. Then came Onam – one week of holidays (you don’t hear us complaining about that J). But this week we hoped to finally get started. On Monday, it seemed that it would succeed: we would leave on Tuesday and visit the projectsite for some 3 or 4 days, and at the end of the week, give in our first proposal – working hard, but we were really looking forward to doing it.

Happy Onam!

Onam celebrations in Poojappura

While in Belgium school started, the beginning of September for us meant holidays: yesterday at work, we celebrated the start of Onam, a 10-day lasting festival that takes place all over Kerala. For that, we needed traditional Keralan clothes. We had the choice: a sari or a salwar kameez – a long dress + trousers and of course the usual scarf, worn the Indian way, which means starting from the back, draped on the front and ending on the back again…

Holidays are over...

Long time ago since I posted the last message… And so much has happened!

Trivandrum, my current home-town

In Goa, we had such horrible weather that both our moods were affected... We decided to take a look on the internet and see whether the weather would be better soon, and if not, where we could go to otherwise. The latter seemed to be the case, no improvement of the weather in Goa soon – in fact all India seemed to be covered with rain – so after long doubting, we decided to take a train to anywhere in the southeast of the country, where it seemed to be least rainy. Chennai was the preferred destination, just almost 1000km away from Goa – but with an easy connection to Mumbai.

So this is what monsoon must be like

I guess we were lucky with the weather we had until now - except for Ooty maybe, but that was not abnormal either. Mostly warm and very few rain. If it rained, it was only for 10minutes or so. Today, that was different - all morning it was raining and raining and raining. Everywhere the landscape was wet to flooded, even the houses were often flooded. We sat in the train, both thinking that in this weather wasn't ideal for exploring Mangalore, nor for our good mood... Besides, we needed to fit in another laundry day and our schedule was already very tight. So we decided to skip Mangalore and go straight to Gokarna, where we are right now.

Not too sure whether Gokarna was such a good idea either

Waiting for the train again

... So that's an excellent opportunity to update our site! However, limited time again since I've got only half an hour left. Was chatting with mommy and that felt so nice!

We're sitting in an internetcafe at Ernakulam, that's the mainland part of Cochin in Kerala. It's amazing how far we've traveled already, we've been in five states since arrival: Maharashtra, a short stop in Andhra Pradesh, Karnataka, Tamil Nadu and now Kerala. Soon we'll also visit Goa, so then we'll have visited all the southern states!

Cochin Chinese fishing nets

... But it can be very hot too :)

After Ooty, we were really fed up with the cold. Especially since I got wet and so did my stuff. So we were wishing for some WARM place, and so we got! We took the train through the beautiful mountains - although they were sometimes invisible because of the many smoke of the train. At the end, when we came through a more densely inhabitated area, there were loads of children waving at the train, that was really very touching. After an in-between-stop we arrived in Coimbatore in the evening, to leave it again the next morning. Our destination was Thanjavur, a rather small city according to Indian standards or at least according to the other cities we visited already (pop. 215 000). We had a really nice and cosy hotel there, with very friendly staff (did the washing there, and bought lots of fruit, which we ate at the hotel restaurant where they were so kind to give us plates).

Thanjavur

Brrr... It can be cold in India!

The first hillstation we visited, Ooty or Udhagamandalam, wasn't an immediate success... While Europe was baking in the sun, we were freezing in our 2 sweaters and sleeping bag - although this might be a little exaggerated, due to the lack of sleep.

The nightbusdrive from Mysore to Ooty was horrible - bad seats, no place to put our backpacks nor our feet, this typical hobbly road of India but then 10 times worse and a motor that produced at least 120dB. But we drove through the wildlife sanctuary and saw 2 elephants and a gaur, so that compensated more or less. We arrived fed up in Ooty at 6 in the morning and had to look for a place to stay. The first one we visited was more expensive than our guide book told us, so we looked for another place to stay.

Mysore update

Here I am again! We wanted to come on the internet earlier already, but the internet connection in Hampi didn't work. 

At this moment we are sitting in a small internet cafe in Mysore - with slow connection, so I can't get on my site, it's taking ages... but I'm feeling so good. We visited Tibetan refugee settlements today, some 90km from Mysore.

Tibetan settlements

First days

Aaaah... so much to say, and no time... But for sure: India is GREAT!!!

I was a little bit sad when leaving Belgium, because I had to miss you all for a long time; but this is really compensating it. I'm only here for 3 days and so much has happened already:

First: getting there. My first flight was 15 minutes late, making me almost miss my next flight - Heathrow really is BIG! But after running hard I was happy to have a window seat, next to a really friendly Indian girl. Not very unusual sitting next to an Indian, because I think I was about the only tourist on the flight :) Also here in India, it's definitely low season: only today we met our first other tourist, Jacquee from Australia, with whom we visited the caves of Ellora.

India: here I come!

Een impressie van Trivandrum op het internet

Finally, all the preparatory work is done, and the journey can start… I’m so looking forward to going that I’m not sleepy at all. However, I’d better get some sleep, because tomorrow day starts early (alarm at 4:30). I’ll meet Els, my friend with whom I will be travelling the next month, at the airport. She will leave around 7:30, and my plane – going to London - will take off at 9:45. There I’ll leave for Mumbai, where I’ll see Els again around 0:30.