Epiblogue

My last 9 days in India were a whirlwind of activity which began on July 22, when I boarded the night bus going from Tirunelveli to Coimbatore in order to meet with the people at Super Spinning Mills. The organic cotton that is produced here is some of the finest and best documented that I have seen. I can't wait to spin some of the samples they sent me and there will be some on offer in the future, so if you are interested, please get in touch.

Although I was told at the travel office that I found in Coimbatore that the Nilgiri Blue Mountain Railway was out of service due to a washout and therefore took a bus to Coonoor, I was later able to ride the famous narrow gauge railway from Coonoor to Udhagamandalam (Ooty) and from there down to Mettupalayam, thereby covering the entire route of the railway.

Coonoor is billed as a sleepy tea growing hamlet, but is actually heavily populated and full of lots of hustle and bustle. I visited a tea plantation, as well as the Tranquilitea tea room, walked in the rain in Sim's Park where I saw the famous map of the world created out of vegetation and met some Indian tourists, visited with and tried to avoid monkeys, walked around town, tried to see Dolphin Nose, Lamb's Rock and Lady Canning's Seat, but was thwarted by fog. Saw Cathryn's Falls right before it was once again swallowed by the mists.


Back in Coonoor proper, I was pleasantly surprised to find a workshop where tribal women are trained to create handicrafts by sewing, knitting and spinning to help them make a decent living. I was also happy to hear that women road laborers had negotiated a raise from Rs. 80 to Rs. 90 per day, which may be only $2.25 but it is at least a start.
















































The train ride to Ooty was beautiful and fun, with all the bridges and tunnels zipping by and grabbing my attention and begging for more photos to be shot.


Ooty gave me the fountain in the upper market, more street scenes, the botanic garden featuring a map of India, had the unique experience of staying in a railway station retiring room due to the combination of heavy downpour coupled with a laptop in a backpack and no umbrella.



































After Ooty, I boarded the tiny train back down the mountain to end up at Mettupalayam, where I learned not to board a train in India on which you don't have a reserved seat unless you particularly enjoy spending 9 hours sitting on a duffle bag outside the restroom of the "ladies only" car ( if you are lucky).

I made it to Bangalore in time to clean up at my hotel and get ready to meet up with the great guys at Mint Fabrics who showed me some of the lovely silk fibers that they produce in the area outside Coimbatore. These items also are available if you want to do some spinning, dying and/or knitting of this delectable fiber. Again, just get in touch and I will hook you up.

I flew on a Kingfisher flight that night (Sunday) to Chennai, where I spent my last night in India. In Chennai, after doing a fair amount of detective work, I was able to locate the Royal Enfield factory, which I had wanted to tour. The guide book gave a phone number that was out of service and listed the tours as free and the hours as 9:30am to 5:00pm, neglecting to mention the 2 and a half hour lunch break that interrupts the middle of the day for the entire factory, but not to be discouraged, I went ahead and waited an hour in the waiting room to take the tour, where I was warned not to take any photos of the actual machines which turn out the leaky but mystical creatures which are the Enfield Bullets and Thunderbirds. Instead, I photographed the parts and the finished cycles. The guy doing the pinstriping is working entirely freehand and does an amazing job.The tour was interesting in presenting the modern practices used on the assembly line to improve both safety and yield. No doubt these will help to improve the quality of the bike itself as time goes by. Now if they only had a model with a drive shaft...




















































I wrapped up my Indian Oddysey at the Chennai International Airport, where, despite all my misgivings, I was able to drag all of my baggage through security and baggage checks and boarded the plane that would take me out of the country.

Later on that day, I landed in the US and began to resume what I know as real life. I am already looking forward to taking another trip to India someday. The friends I made, the places I fell in love with and the singular environment that is India will stay with me until that becomes possible. Until then I have tons of memories as well as electronic and snail mail connections to keep me in touch with everyone back in Tamil Nadu and especially at Annai Vellankanni Health Center.

To everyone who has been following along: thanks for travelling with me!

Aaacckkk! Running out of Time!

This past week or 2 have gone by in a real blurr. I have been going to surgeries, catching babies, running off to see places that I've seen and places I haven't seen, meeting more new people, reconnecting with people whose babies I've caught or whom I've met elsewhere along the way, and trying to arrange my exit journey from India.

I

I will be stopping at Coimbatore to tour the organic cotton mill and catch the bus or train to Mettupalayam. There I catch the Blue Mountain Railway to Coonoor. I'll stop there and make a side trek to Kotagiri (okay, maybe bus there and walk back) where I will visit a Women's Cooperative where they teach handicrafts. Then I'll get back on the Blue Mountain Rails to get to Ooty (Oodagamandalam), the famous hill station. From there the BMR takes me back to Mettupalayam, where I take a train or bus to Bangalore. In Bangalore, I will check out some cashmere for spinning and maybe some silk to bring home. I'll take a flight from there to Chennai. In Chennai, I will get to meet Jeremy's friend Rekha and visit the Enfield motorcycle factory before catching my flight home on the 31st.

It has been great being here, but I am really looking forward to getting home and cooking some good old fashioned American food (okay, good old fashioned American hippie food), seeing my family, playing with the dogs, playing with my grandbabies, playing with my spinning wheel and getting cold while camping out at the Folks Festival.

This has been an amazing three months. The things I've learned about people and life and the friendships I've begun will affect my outlook forever. I am already looking forward to a return trip so that I can continue exploring this place and see my friends again. Who knows when that will be, but when I leave, a piece of me will stay behind, pulling me back.

Waterfalls, Weddings and a Wild Weekend

Hi All! Sorry for the long silence! I have been too lax in posting and not because I have been lazy, just trying to do everything I can in the last 4 weeks I have here in Tirunelveli. I went to 2 weddings in one day, the first was my first Hindu wedding, for which we had to walk barefoot to the temple. The second was another wedding of a family member of the doctors at our hospital. Of course, both involved copious amounts of wonderful food. In fact, at the Hindu wedding they insisted on feeding me before and after the ceremony!

Mirko, Justin and I went shopping one day last week and inadvertently got lost before we actually arrived at our intended destination. Instead, we bought lunghi's at a different store and having become further lost, were rescued by 2 sisters who turned out to be teachers at a local secondary school who were dying to ask us in for tea and snacks. They then guided us back to the bus stop from which we made our way back into charted territory.

On Sunday, June 24, we went for a day trip to Courtallam(Kuttrallam) to see the waterfalls. You have to hike a fair distance to get to all fo them but the views and the water itself was worth the effort. At the main, lower falls, women and men go into opposite sides of the falls, but in the upper falls the situation is slightly less formal. Still, all the women go into the water fully dressed and the men go in bathing trunks. It was still quite refreshing to just stand there and let the water pour over you. The monkeys were also entertaining. We saw the biggest jackfruit in the world and ate adventurous stand food...

On the weekend just past I accompanied a few volunteers to Pondicherry, a former French colony. There we experienced some culture shock in not eating Indian food for a solid 2 days! Wild! Hot Breads is everything they are cracked up to be! Great fresh croissants, omelettes and REAL COFFEE!!! Found some workshops that are connected with the Sri Aurobindo Society which incorporates spiritual training with training for the solid world in the form of handmade paper, incense, fabric printing and book publication. We saw the ocean but I did not swim in it as the "beach" was mainly comprised of large rocks and there was a very strong "side current" which was moving people swiftly down the beach when they tried to walk in the water...

Saw the Ghandi memorial and some lovely neighborhoods and the Botanical Garden. Unfortunately, the great distance between Pondicherry and Tirunelveli made it a quick trip despite having taken the whole weekend.

I have been told there is a party planned in my honor in the final days of my visit. I will be sure to get some photos.

Into the mists

The weekend of June 9-10, I travelled to Kodaicanal, one of South India's famous hill stations. The route we covered climbed from sea level to over 6700 feet. It felt almost like home. Many of the plant species looked familiar, but even those were somewhat different from the varieties I see in my familiar surroundings. The only one that didn't appear to have changed was the Century plant with its tall flower stalk and I was unable to capture any of them with my camera.

We arrived in "Kodai" via a night bus which was aptly designated a "Semi-Sleeper", as while the driver and a few of the passengers appeared to be in a nightmare, the rest of us were just along for the ride. The first half hour was great and relaxing, after that, the rest of the passengers boarded the bus and there was no room to breathe, much less sleep... but it got us there in time for a gorgeous sunrise and plenty of time to walk around town, have breakfast, find our hotel and our comrades before setting out on our rainforest trek.

Some interesting signs, an observatory that didn't allow visitors and several wedding parties who appeared to have been partying since the previous day... Kodaicanal is not a dry county...

The rainforest adventure took us into the hills courtesy of our guide Vijay, who has been living in the area for over 20 years and is imminently qualified to educate folks about the local environment, especially certain indigenous plants. David, this is for you: he reminded me uncannily of you. Whether it was body language, his smile or his apparently intimate knowledge of certain indigenous plants, I'm not sure, but the resemblance was definitely there.

We hiked up to a good vantage point in the Shola forest to look down at the mists rising up from the valley, saw tree ferns, calla lilies, wild golden raspberries, wild strawberries, datura, brugmansia, yellow sundrops, jack in the pulpit, lantana, and many other flowering plants, along with waterfalls, dense rainforest growth and lots of litter. I was truly wishing I had brought a trash bag with me so I could pick up trash like I did at Periyar... actually, it wasn't quite as bad, but it is disconcerting to have someone telling you how hard the officials are working at preserving the rainforest while at the same time hopping over a stream in which resides a used disposable diaper...

That said, we did see a lot of beautiful landscape. After lunch, during which I posed for my official International Knitting in Public Day photo, we had the obligatory shopping tour, finding among our treasures, the Eco Nut health food store, which just happened to be in the same building as our hotel and featured the first whole grain bread I have seen since arriving in India. They also provided me with some lovely homemade blueberry jam which I have been enjoying ever since. Another find was the Grandma's Jackfruit preserves, which I will share with any takers upon my return. The hardware store provided me with the 2 items I have been needing to make my room at the hospital complete: an extension cord (only one outlet) and a water heating coil for heating my porridge and tea water in the morning.

The lovely hot (yes) shower (that came out of a showerhead up on the wall!!!) was a welcome welcome to our cozy little hotel room. The ladies who stayed at the other hotel and described their accommodations aptly as a shed reported very cold temperatures overnight, but we were quite snug at J's after a lovely dinner at the Cloud Street Inn ( background of the knitting shot) I'm not advertising them, just want to make sure I remember if I ever get to go back... We were so spoiled by the food that we ate 2 more meals there.

The next morning I was surprised to hear a different sort of street noise from what I am used to hearing in Tirunelveli. No blaring temple music, no honking of horns and bicycle bells, but voices and the sound of carts being wheeled along the bumpy streets. The Sunday market! I had to go explore! I even put my camera on the "cuisine" setting when I saw all the great veggies and spices, fish and implements that were on offer! Those purple pointy things are banana flowers and the dangerous implements are tools for extracting coconut flesh from the shells. That big purple and white thing is me and my butt...

Next on the itinerary was the obligatory Kodai bike ride around the lake next to Bryant's Park. We rented them for 10 Rs per hour (25cents) and took off. Of course, the lake turned out to have a much longer perimeter than it appeared, due to the meandering nature of its "arms", but we made it past the shop stalls, lotuses, honeymooners and even all the volunteers who offered to take our pictures in just under 2 hours.

We even ran into the little old guy with his puppy whom I had been trying to catch in town! I bribed him for a good shot of him with his friend.

Then, suddenly, it was time to leave. The guys at the hotel were sweet and let us wash up after our bike ride and after having checked out! And just in time, too, because as our bus was arriving, it began to pour! We chugged back down the mountain past idyllic views and signs exhorting us to avoid plastic things. I'm sure that's good advice.

Until next time then...

June 2 post continues...

The canoe builders were hard at work, as I mentioned... We returned to the boat and had dinner, a swim and tied up at the shore for the night. It rained hard, which it is prone to doing during monsoon season, but brought a beautiful rainbow for the sunrise.

We got reacquainted with Maya, a little girl who introduced herself the previous evening and her friend in the yellow dress whose name I didn't catch.

Since no houseboat trip would be complete without a stint at the helm, Alison and I took turns driving, then a bridge was coming up so my fun got cut short... We were mooned by the Goddess of Light ( no, really) as we tooled back down the river. Our day of houseboat living was at an end and we were headed back to life and work as we currently know it.

Next installment will be our outing to Kodaicanal, which already happened, with a trek into a South Indian old growth evergreen rainforest, but that will have to wait until at least tomorrow.

Stay tuned!

I woke up Saturday morning , June 2, to a lovely quiet scene: the moon setting over the lake with houseboats on the opposite shore. I sat there on the hotel balcony taking pictures and working on Zhoie's sweater ( finished the body) and enjoyed the quiet.

The next picture after that one is the last half of a mongoose(left side of the picture) out hunting his breakfast.

I saw some fishermen setting out in a canoe.

After breakfast, we set out for the houseboat that would take us on the backwater tour for the next 24 hours. Aboard the boat, we passed under bridges where trains were crossing the river.

We were an endless source of amusement to local people, especially children. We saw another houseboat that actually looked like a floating house. The fellows on the boat must have spent all of their time preparing food for us because there certainly was a lot of it and my was it tasty, especially washed down with all of that good tea and coffee and even a beer on Saturday evening!

We floated past some tranquil looking islands, some with tiny cottages built on them!

Next, the happy campers (houseboaters) went canoeing up some tiny backwaters to do some exploring.

We met a nice lady whose family builds canoes, which sell for the equivalent cost of a motorcycle here and are much more durable and cheap to run...

My Big Phat Indian Weddings

This past week I was privileged to attend 2 major Indian weddings. The first was a wedding in the family of Dr. Gigi, with whom I am working and the second was in the family of one of the babies I caught. The first was in a small town near Nagercoil and due to the fact that the wedding was immediately after the first surgery of the day, I didn't get a chance to grab my camera and take pictures, so descriptions will have to suffice. The wedding was of a cousin of Dr. Gigi's. Both members of the couple are doctors, as were almost all the attendees. In fact, the main difference between this wedding and a medical convention was the gorgeous attire, with the added bonus of better food! The bride and groom both sported matching flower garlands and both carried large bouquets of flowers. The bride wore an elaborate sari that appeared to be about 50% beads and gold thread, as well as about 20 pounds of gold jewellery - stunning! The ceremony had started before we arrived, so I can't comment on that, other than the fact that there were hundreds of people in attendance. We walked from the wedding to a reception hall where we were treated to a feast and wedding cake and then had to get back to Tirunelveli since 3 of the people in our car were also doctors. Dr. Gigi's 2 daughters rode in the back seat with me and regaled me with reviews of the latest Harry Potter books they had read. Dr. Gigi's older daughter, Gina, has qualified with very high marks for entering medical school so will be going off to her studies soon.

The second wedding I attended was in a small town called Kayalpatnam or Kayalpattinam, depending on the sign you look at. I was invited to this one by the auntie of a new baby. The wedding festivities began the day before the wedding and the confusion began a little before that. It seems everyone I asked told me that to get to Kayapatnam you have to first pass through Tiruchendur, so that was where I told the bus driver I was headed. About 2 hours into the trip, I began seeing signs reading "....Kayalpattinam" and "...Kayalpatnam" and asked whether this was indeed the town we were in. The bus driver told me yes, so I asked him to let me off. Silly me. He did. I was now in Kayalpatnam with no idea how to get where I was going. I tried to call the kindly doctor whom the TPA director had given me contact info, but no answer. I tried calling the auntie, whom I later found out doesn't live in Kayalpatnam, who told me she was on her way there, from where I couldn't quite understand. I asked her to tell the man at the phone stand where I was and how to get to her house. He talked to her for a few minutes and then hung up the phone, leaving me as much in the dark as I was to begin with since he didn't speak English and for some reason I still don't speak Tamil. He did flag down an autorickshaw and got me a ride which turned out to be to the home of the maternal grandmother of the new baby. The baby and mom were there as well, although, it still being less than 6 weeks after the birth of the baby, the mom still isn't allowed to go outside to greet visitors so I didn't see her until I was safely inside.

Between all the food and all of the "Rest Now" requests, I was bustled hither and thither to all the relatives on all sides of the family, down all the narrow alleys and passageways in Kayalpatnam for tea, snacks and meals. Everyone wanted to give me something, so I came away with lots of new things to send home. Some interesting.

The wedding itself was also interesting. The women's part was held in a hall where all the female members of both families gathered to appreciate and decorate the bride and pray and take lots of pictures... all at the same time. Then the groom and the men joined us and the ceremony was over rather quickly, followed by another round of visiting and later another feast which included huge piles of biryani on banana leaves.

Later we visited a 100 year old church and a famous mosque.

Afterward, we visited Mina Garden and drank coconut juice and watched our driver climb a jackfruit tree and bowl with coconuts. (see pics). I apologize for these last being sideways but will try to correct later. Auntie also has a lovely little swimming pool where she swims and allows town folk to swim occasionally before reusing the water to irrigate the garden... very good resource management.

My ride back to Tirunelveli/Pallayamkotai was courtesy of auntie, who, it turns out, lives in Tirunelveli, about 5 minutes from me. She sent me home with 2 pineapples from her garden, iddly and palm fruit juice which we had purchased on the way back from the garden.

I was totally exhausted on arriving home and had a much needed long sleep before rejoining the working world the next day.

More posts to come!