Hello all!
I am here in Varkala...a great beach town in the very south of India. I arrived here last night after taking a boat cruise through the heart of Kerala's backwaters. The boat stops at the ashram so I hopped on there at about 4:00 pm. Our first stop was 2 minutes later when we stopped for Chai...the whole country seems to stop for Chai at 4:00 pm...good thing I love the stuff so much.
After tea, we headed out into the waters and took a slow cruise to Kollum. The cruise was breathtakingly beautiful. All along the way the banks of the rivers are lined with coconut trees, colorful homes, and children running along the banks waving and asking us for pens. The standard line out of each boy's mouth was, "Give me my one pen". Not sure where they picked up this line, but it was the same all along the way.
On the cruise I made fast friends with three people from Ireland...Pauline, Adrian and Sean
. They were so much fun. Adrian decided to launch into traditional Irish songs along the way. Thank goodness his voice was pretty good. I knew how much my Dad would have enjoyed sitting there singing with him, and talking about all things Irish. I took a short video on the camera to snag a moment for Dad (we'll have a chuckle over it soon, Dad!).
Once into Kollum, I found a cab pretty easily. My friends helped me get squared away and off to Varkala. The trip was about 45 minutes, even though it was quite close in distance...the roads are quite full of potholes, so the going is slow. It took a while to find the hotel. THere are many twisty narrow roads in this town. When I made the hotel reservation, I asked for directions but I couldn't get a response from the man I was speaking with as his English wasn't nearly good enough. So, as we approached the town, I had no way to tell the taxi driver how to get there. The Indian way, at least for the taxi drivers I have encountered throughout the trip, is to wait until we are close to the destination and then begin to ask people how to get there. The only problem is, the response always seems to get us only a short way, where we again have to stop to ask someone new. This happened over and over, with us asking more than half a dozen people for guidance. All in all, we drove for at least 20 minutes trying to find the hotel...quite a laugh when you see how small this little village is. But we did arrive and I found my hotel. The sea view turned out to be this tiny slit in the view, through the restaurant directly in front of the hotel. And that was a joke because everything sits on this cliff, way above the beach. I had to laugh at myself...I know better than to have such expectations.
I found my way to the restaurant and had a delicious meal of chicken tikka from the tandoori oven. I have grown to love the food here. An errant decision to have a small pot of Chai at 10:30 (my thought was to stay awake long enough to make a few calls home) turned into at least two hours of staring at the ceiling fan as it whirred away trying to keep the mosquitos at bay and cool the room down to an acceptable 85 degrees. Oh well. I am here in Varkala and am enjoying the completely laid back feeling of this part of India.
Tomorrow I will share with you some of the more funny moments of the last two weeks...and some of the last moments with Amma.
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