Trivandrum: part II

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When reading about Trivandrum we have come across quite a few negative views. And, even amongst Keralans, the prevailing attitude seems to be that the people of Trivandrum, especially the men, are an unpleasant bunch. However, we liked Trivandrum despite its distinct lack of pavements which made walking a slightly risky affair; it is much cleaner than Kochi in terms of arbitrarily discarded rubbish, the polluting fumes are less overpowering, and there seems to be a lot more space. The people may not be as friendly as in Kochi, but they are by no means unfriendly. The attitude of the Keralans towards people from Trivandrum could be the usual anti-big-city-view that is found in almost every country.

Getting dressed
The first task that had to be accomplished in Trivandrum was to get some new clothes. Mort was changing between three shirts and two pairs of trousers; none of them quite the right fit. The trousers, bought in Fabindia, had gone gradually shorter, not quite 1980s German style short, but still too short to be comfortable. And the shirts were a bit too tight around his chest. He seems to have an abnormally large ribcage and, as a consequence, shirts that otherwise fit always tend to be too tight around the chest. Sarah's clothes, on the other hand, seemed to fit well, but she had some colour combination issues to deal with. Additionally, due to the high levels of perspiration, a wardrobe extension was much needed if we wanted to avoid having to wash clothes every second day.

The receptionist at the guest house suggested that we should go to a department store close to the train station, and so we did. Mort tried on some shirts, which, even the XL sizes, were much too tight around the chest, and the trousers, which were much too short. Also, none of the items were particularly nice. Sarah, on the other hand, managed to find a nice medium length kurta. This was when we realised the obvious: the only way to get clothes that fit is to get them tailor made. So, since we remembered that Murali, who runs Mickeys homestay in Kumily where we would be going onto after Trivandrum, also deals in textiles, we decided to get some clothes made when we got there.

The temple mob
One of the main reasons for going to Tamil Nadu is the temples. Kerala, on the other hand, doesn't have many such attractions, but Trivandrum has a large temple, Shri Padmanabhaswamy temple, that is something like 5000 years old.
Temples are generally off limits for non-Hindus. Usually, you can get into the grounds of the temple, but actually entering it is not permitted. As we approached the temple, a funny little man, clearly trying to look like a Gandhi replicate, waved and asked us to follow him. It didn't take us long to realise that he worked as an unofficial guide and clearly expected to be paid for his services. Had we known how limited in size the area surrounding the temple is we would also have known that a guide would be a superfluous accessory. All he did was to provide us with text book information about the temple and show us a carpenter, whom we would have been hard pressed to not come across even without a guide, making sculptures out of sandal wood.

After 15 minutes of hard work Gandhi Guide expected his payment, which, of course, we duly provided him with. Mort thought that Rs. 30 would be appropriate for his services, but Gandhi Guide clearly wasn't happy. He saw the extra couple of tens in Mort's hand and claimed that these should be part of the payment. Obviously, we refused and Gandhi Guide left in disgust. Making Rs. 30 for 15 minutes of uninspired and mediocre work is more than enough in India.

When we left the temple, the inevitable happened. A school class of girls from Cozhicode, a city north of Kochi, approached Sarah. Or rather, one of the girls did, but she was swiftly followed by another and eventually even the shyest had developed enough courage. And Sarah was then victimised as a photographic target (doesn't want to be photographed and is not photogenic). Mort, observing this in the background, found the whole spectacle extremely amusing and was close to laughing out loud seeing that Sarah was in a rather uncomfortable situation.
However, there were more school classes about. And these were boys. A complete encroachment occurred just a few seconds after the photo above was taken, and suddenly it was Mort's turn to explain about his life, including why he doesn't have or want any children, and ask intelligent questions of the boys. Luckily, no photographic evidence of this encounter exists (except on the school boys' phones!).

Attractions
Apart from the temple we spent most of the time walking around the city. We are not big on museums, galleries and such places. We prefer to get a feel for the location by looking at people, buildings and everyday life. One place we did deliberately seek out was the public gardens located in the north of Trivandrum that contains the Napier Museum and the Shri Chitra Art Gallery. We would highly recommend both places.

The museum contains ancient arts and crafts from Kerala and South Asia, including a carved temple chariot. The gallery contains some incredible paintings, mainly by Indian painters, and was, strangely, a lot more interesting than the average gallery or museum in Europe.

Kerala's Government is located at the top of Trivandrum's main road, Mahatma Gandhi Road.
Being the capital grand buildings and wide roads are main features of Trivandrum.

Also on MG Road is the market where people go to buy fruit, vegetables and meat. One of the most amazing fruits grown in Kerala is, believe it or not, the banana. They come in all shapes and forms, which is unknown to most westerners who are used to the uniform supermarket bananas.
Eating a banana in Kerala is a completely different experience to eating a banana in the UK. Not only is it fresh, but they tend to be a lot sweeter than the Central American bananas eaten in Europe. Bananas are used for many purposes in India. Fried banana chips, bought from street stalls, are very popular, and are made from the red bananas seen in the foreground of the photo.

While we were in the market we came across this stall holder who explicitly asked to photographed. Unfortunately, the light wasn't perfect.
Not far from the market, on a side street to MG Road, there is a book market. Before going to India we read somewhere that buying books in India is cheap. Well, this hasn't been our experience. It may be half price but that isn't exactly cheap when most other products in India are one tenth of the price in the UK. Further, the quality of the print is much inferior to UK books.
Trivandrum signs
With legs being our main means of transportation we did feel the heat quite a bit. Every day the temperature reached to around 30 degrees with a real feel of 35 and extreme humidity. However, at no point did we feel unpleasantly warm, but it does make you consider how the weather is in the summer (it is winter now).

Despite the heat we would always recommend exploring India by foot if possible. It gives you the chance to experience Indian sign mastery. In the street where we stayed we found a sign which advertised a place that we both felt we could have benefited from:
A few minutes later we walked past a beauty parlour. We assumed that “pluse mount” is not English with a spelling error.
In Trivandrum we saw, for the first time, a bullock drawn cart. It may look like a nice, romantic scene, but the bulls are usually treated appallingly. Not only do the bulls work long hours for no benefit of their own, but it is common practice for the cart drivers to hit the bullocks' testicles to make them move faster. And that is just a fraction of the abuse they are exposed to daily.
Other foreigners
Wild Palm Guest House has experienced a boom in the number of stays recently. This is due to MyTravel having started flying charter flights from London to Trivandrum for about £ 250; 310 tourists are flown in once a week. They typically spend their time at Kovalam beach, and two weeks later they fly back home. A few of them will spend their two weeks travelling around Kerala and we talked to a few of them as they stayed for one night a Wild Palm. Considering how much time we have spent planning a two and half months stay it was surprising how unprepared most people were.

Another guest at Wild Palm was an American woman who, after having been through the intensity of Delhi and Chennai where she had been working, had come to Kerala to rest. We recommended GK Homestay to her and, we were later told, she actually went there and seemed to have a good time.

Leaving Trivandrum
Most of our trip has been fairly well planned with exact departure and arrival days mapped out. However, even though we have read that train tickets should be booked months ahead we haven't bothered. In Trivandrum we booked train tickets for the six hour train journey from Madurai to Villupuram, both in Tamil Nadu, only two weeks ahead. The only complication was the complete lack of queue culture we experienced at the train station. Usually, when we have to deal with officials Sarah does the talking; the logic is that, as a native English speaker, she will be better equipped in dealing with people speaking Indian English. Unfortunately, being from the country that invented queue culture, she is not that well equipped in dealing with people who jump queues. Observing from a safe location Mort could follow how she, from being second in line, ended up tenth as rude Indians squeezed past her when she was queuing at the information desk at the train station. On woman in particular was a persistent queue jumper. By using her massive frame she twice managed to move in front; first at the information desk and later at the booking desk. Luckily, she was incompetent in filling out forms and was quickly rejected.

Anyway, we booked the train journey without any trouble. However, getting out of Trivandrum wasn't quite as easy. Our destination after Travandrum was Kumily which is an eight hour bus drive from Trivandrum. It is a journey up hill on pretty poor roads and we decided that it would be a lot more pleasant, and a lot more expensive, to make the trip by car. Since Wild Palm has a driver attached it made sense to take advantage of this service.

The price for the car was Rs. 7 per kilometre. The driver claimed that it was a 255 kilometre drive meaning we would have to pay for 510 kilometres. Knowing that drivers shouldn't always be trusted, Mort, who had claimed to the hotel receptionist that Kumily definitely wasn't 255 kilometres away, checked the metre before we left. It was at xxx340 when we left and at xxx557 when we arrived in Kumily, in total 227 kilometres or 454 kilometres. So, we paid for 56 kilometres, or Rs. 400, more than we should have.

But this wasn't the only problem. The car turned out to be in a poor state. There was no tread left in any of the tyres; absolutely not recommended when driving in the mountains. Unsurprisingly, we had a puncture an hour into the journey. Stopping in a small village where no foreign face probably ever goes lead to the usual gathering of children, from the nearby school, around the car. The were all very sweet.

We eventually reached Kumily after six hours drive, including the lost hour due to the puncture, but it really was an experience we could have been without. We will complain to Wild Palm when we return to England and will do our best to revoke the overly positive reviews that the place gets on the Internet. Anyway, who would go to a place that has this kind of rule set? They should learn that rules work a lot better when phrased positively.

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This entry was posted by pundabee, on Saturday, December 16, 2006. You can leave your response.