Beer, bathing and bliss at Arambol in Goa

After a night of drinking and debauchery in Kochi on Valentine’s day (we decided to flee the ashram on valentine’s day because you’re supposed to be chaste and not even kiss or hug – ironic hey – so we went somewhere we could have a beer and a kiss!) we arrived back in Goa – the North part this time, at a beach called Arambol, that’s a kind of young hippy/backpacker hangout, along with a significant group of aging hippy stoners, most of whom seem to spend their time at the café at the place we’re staying, and they’re a good laugh! We have a nice room right on the beach, and we’re spending 5 days here dedicated to hedonism. It’s been mostly swimming, reading, wandering up the beach, eating good food, drinking beer (and cocktails on occasion!), chatting to people and lazing around. Goa is nothing like the rest of India – everything is easy and slow here – so we’re enjoying it before we rejoin the fray in a few days in Mumbai!

Goa worked a treat. We spent the whole of the five days here doing as little as we could. The only exception being the day, Scott decided he was sick of watching everybody else having fun on their motorcycles and mopeds and hired one of his own. Not having any experience on a two wheeled motorized vehicle except for a brief stint in Thailand over four years ago was not going to stop him from getting his piece of the action.

After a few wobbly starts he soon got the hack of the vehicle and was smiling from ear to ear as he zoomed around the curvy mountain roads in the hills just behind the beaches of Goa. He spent an hour cruising south and stopped at the Anjuna markets for a quick bear at one of the cliff bars that overlooked the beautiful India Ocean. Since Anjuna was famous for its markets and bargain buys, Scott decided to negotiate himself an anklet for Shell, something he had been planning to do for weeks but never seemed to have an opportunity.

After this quick pit stop he hopped back on the bike, rode down south to the outskirts of the capital Panaji, spent ten minutes negotiating the crazy streets of the capital and navigated his way to Old Goa. This part of Goa was infiltrated quite strongly by the Christian settlers and many old beautiful churches still remained. Scott found it quite strange after setting foot inside so many Indian temples and mosques to be inside a Christian church.

It was like India had taken a European church and attempted to copy it. Scott couldn’t point out exactly what was the difference between the Indian and European churches were but it seemed to him, like with every other attempt India had made to reproduce something Western, that something about it just wasn’t quite the same.

Amma's Ashram

Another boat cruise through the backwaters, this time on a bigger ferry, dropped us off at Amma’s Ashram for a night. I’m not sure how many people have heard of Amma, but she’s pretty famous and is often called the Hugging Saint. She blesses people by hugging them, and has hugged over 24 million people. She’s pretty amazing – since she was a child she has just wanted to spread love and compassion, and she does this by consoling people, offering advice, and giving them hugs. She’s over 50 now and her popularity and the ashram just keep growing – it’s strange because there’s huge apartment buildings there to house the 3000 people who live at the ashram, which looks strange in the middle of these rural backwater areas! She’s done heaps of good work too – orphanages, building homes for tsunami refugees and other homeless people, feeding the poor, providing pensions, schools and colleges, and heaps of other humanitarian projects. She’s addressed UN conventions and other meetings too, and received peace awards.

The strange thing there was that it was like being in the presence of a god. There are lots of her devotees living there (mostly dressed in white, it’s a bit eerie), and they come to see her giving darshan (the hug-blessing ceremonies she does all day most days where anyone can come queue up for a hug) – when she walks in they all stand up and they pray to her, and in the main hall of the temple there are huge paintings of Amma in the form of Shiva or Krishna, Hindu gods….. it’s all focused on spirituality, with meditation in the mornings and group singing in the evenings, and if you like you can stay as long as you want, months, years, your whole life. We found it a bit strange, but we did get a hug of course, and she is a very good hugger! But when Shelley was getting her hug, Amma decided to hold a conversation with someone behind us – offering advice maybe, but without letting go of Shelley – so that she was held there for maybe 2 minutes, which felt like an eternity, and Scott on his knees behind her found it incredibly difficult not to burst out laughing! It would have been very inappropriate though to laugh at a demi-god during her religious blessing though so he refrained. It was a lovely place – they gave us a room with a balcony right on the beach, and it is full of interesting people (loads of westerners!) so it would be a great place to relax and observe for a while, but we found the spirituality aspects a bit unnerving, unfortunately we are infidels. We really admire her work though, and anyone who hugs so many people has got my respect. Not many photos from here as it was not allowed to take photos inside the complex.

Cruising along....

Fellow cruisers on their way to work

Some of the ashram complex seen from the river

Kollam

Kollam was the furthest south we ventured – and you could tell the difference, it was much more humid and hot down there closer to the equator! It’s a very confusing town, and the lonely planet map is equally vague, so a lot of our time there was spent trying to work out where we were and how to get to where we were going without getting too lost. The fact that all the locals we asked pointed us in completely the wrong direction really didn’t help! Oh and this was the place that we got excited because Shelley found a cheap room for 120 rupees a night ($4) but which didn’t turn out to be such a good deal because it had fleas and we are now still covered in bites 5 days later.

However, we went to Kollam in order to go on a boat ride around the backwaters there, which was a lovely was to spend an afternoon. The guys punt you around on a traditional canoe-like boat, and you cruise through these little coconut palm-lined channels watching life go on in the villages around you. They also have a few stops so you can see some of the traditional crafts in the region – making rope from coconut fibres and building boats like the one we were in, from jackfruit tree wood and bound together with the coconut fibre rope and made waterproof with cashew nut oil. Apparently they last for 65 years!

Coconuts drying

Our driver....

The driver told us that wearing a hibiscus behind your ear means that you're crazy in that region...... pretty apt really...

Making boats

Another mad one!

Periyar Wildlife Sanctuary

So after bidding goodbye to Frances we headed off to Kumily, a small town next to periyar wildlife sanctuary, where we were hoping to spot some of the 1000 elephants who live there. Sadly, no elephants (we found out later we should have bribed the guide to take us to some) but we did manage to see some bison, sambar (like stocky deer), wild boar, birds of prey, and lots of Nilgiri Langour – a cute black monkey with a loooooong tail and grey whiskers that’s endemic to the area. We did see fresh elephant poo and tiger poo and porcupine poo, as well as places elephants rub their backs against, and leopard claw marks up a tree! Actually in the end we saw most of this stuff one afternoon when we went into the park and had a guided walk and a boat trip, but earlier that morning we had done a sneaky sneaky guided walk through a side entrance to avoid the huge park entrance fees. Our mate Cappa had done the same thing and saw lots, but unfortunately that morning was misty and the guide was a bit incompetent so on our 4 hour walk we saw nothing. So we had to go into the park anyway! But it wasn’t a complete waste of time, even though we had to get up at 5am for it – because to start with, a little way inside the park, the guide made us crouch down in the early morning pitch darkness to listen. Knowing you’re in a place with tigers and leopards and elephants and lots of other animals really puts your nerves on edge, and sitting there in the darkness we felt palpably how vulnerable humans are, and we really felt our lack of claws or horns or teeth! It got scary as we heard rustlings getting closer and closer – but when we jumped up in fright and whatever it was crashed off into the forest, our guide laughed and told us it was a deer. We’d both been trying to find our nearest weapons and hide behind each other!

In the mist, seeing nothing....

A Nilgiri Langour - awwwww!

Leopard claw marks -ooooooo!

Sambar drinking

So no elephants but it was a fun time – we met some nice people in Kumily and had some beers with them, and we also visited a spice garden (they grow lots of spices round there) where the lovely girl who works there showed us all sorts of things like cardamom, pepper, nutmeg, tea, coffee, ginger, natural insulin plant, menthol plant, cloves, jackfruit, beetlenut and lots of herbal medicine plants. Our noses were all worn out afterwards! Here's Scott sniffing cardamom...

Kannur

Frances joined us for the first leg of our trip down south, just a night in Kannur where we spent most of our time hanging out in a cheap juice bar that did amazing shakes and an all you can eat lunch for 50c Australian! The main purpose of this visit was to go and watch a teyyam performance – a kind of religious festival that goes for a few days in each little village in the area – they can last all night and have dancers possessed by the gods. Ours was of the tamer variety, but we still saw some crazily decorated guys, one with a headdress almost as big as himself, dancing round to the beat of drums. And their eyes were definitely not in this world! There were also loads of people sleeping there, because they camp out at the temple for the length of the festival. Unfortunately we had to leave the next day or we would have stayed for the 4am bathing and the afternoon coconut throwing they invited us to! There were no other westerners there so we felt a bit intrusive but they all loved having us there and kept trying to give us things – some of the ladies adopted Frances and I and even invited us to all sleep at their house! It was an interesting night…

Starnge possessed guy with a big headress

Ok a bit blurry but it's the temples and the dancers in front of them blessing people

Devoted people sleeping outside

Goa Part 1 - Colva Beach

Luckily we headed to Goa afterwards for a brief couple of days of swimming and beer…. It was just a short stop but we had some fun drinking cocktails on the beach with Frances who met us there, and the main eventful moment was Scott fracturing his foot while dancing around with some Indian bank function one night. They were on some company excursion (and oh my god Indians are bad dancers! Like the 70’s crossed with 14 year old dancers….) and made us all come up and dance too. Of course they loved Scott’s crazy dancing and kept egging him on to dance more. Unfortunately he landed on a plank that was jutting out at one point and twisted his ankle – but we think maybe fractured something too because it’s still getting better after a week or so. I guess getting a dancing injury gets you credibility! The part of Goa we stayed in was a bit strange though because it was filled with Indian families on holiday – women swimming in complete saris of course – and the beach got manically crowded in the afternoons! We retreated to some beers at the beach shacks, and of course masala dosa (like pancakes with curry and coconut chutney – my dad’s favourite and now we understand why!) Sorry we were having too much fun relaxing to take any photos!

Hampi

First stop was Hampi, a World Heritage site of a 13th-Century city, full of ruins of temples, bazaars, royal quarters and even elephant stables! It has a very cool laid-back vibe too and we spent a few days there exploring the ruins and wandering around the weird boulder-filled landscape. Highlights were watching the sunset from the top of a big hill, with a 360 degree view of ruins and boulders, trying to fend off cheeky monkeys trying to steal your stuff – there was even a chai seller who’d hiked up there too, enterprising guy so we bought one off him! They also have these round boats as ferries across the small river – they looked really unstable but managed to hold 3 motorbikes and about 15 people in them! It was also great to chat to new people and not just each other – met an Israeli guy (there’s heaps of Israelis over here for some reason) who had managed to get out of the obligatory 2 years of military duty by pretending to be insane, and was travelling instead, and wanted to set up a travelling shadow puppet show…. Only bad point of Hampi was that, after 3 months on an alcohol-free campus at JITM, we went straight to an alcohol-free town! That’s due to its religious significance, because lots of Indian pilgrims still come to the temples there. Oh, and we met our first elephant – Lakshmi – who was a resident at the main temple and she gave Scott a blessing – you give her a rupee coin, which she grabs with her trunk and hands to her minder, then she puts her trunk on your head to bless you. If you give her some bananas instead she does the same – but with more enthusiasm I think!

Wandering along an old bazaar...

Washing day! So much colour!

Scott with the old royal elephant stables in the background

These boats don't look too stable but they can fit 3 motorbikes and 15 people in them!

Some of the many ruins scattered around the area

Scott and Lakshmi eye each other off - just post-blessing

Women in one of the temples - they just looked so pretty!

Monkey surveying the view from the top of Matanga Hill - boulders everywhere!

Goodbye to JITM

So after 3 months at JITM of both interesting and frustrating times, having accomplished a lot but not quite as much as we would have liked, because of course this is India, we finally embarked upon the road again. Here's a few photos from our last days at JITM.

Sunflowers blooming at the AID site

The pottery guy and his wheel

Our biotechnology students give a good bye party for us

Saying goodbye to Dhanada and Babita