Archive for the ‘Clothing’ Category

Making Friends in Tea Plantations

Friday, September 2nd, 2011

Warning: this post contains language that some people may not be happy reading. It’s also not appropriate for young readers. You have been warned.

While Emily, Lauren and I were wandering along the road through the tea plantations trying to find Little Adam’s Peak we met a local. He was late teens I guess, though could have been early twenties.

We passed him as we were walking up the hill. When we got to the top we stopped to take some photos and he caught up with us.

He came up to Emily and said something to her that sounded like “Are you fine?”.

Which I thought was a little odd. English conversations here go like this: “How are you?” “I’m fine. How are you?” “I’m fine.”. Deviations from this script just don’t happen.

We asked him to repeat what he’d said. At which point Emily and I both figured it out.

“Are you fucking?”

Emily was shocked and didn’t quite know what to do.

He tried again with a different line.

“You are very beautiful.”

So Emily and I walked off on him.

He then went up to Lauren.

“I love you.”

She joined us in walking up the hill and away from him.

We jokingly put it down to the fact that Emily was wearing black (I’ve been told that that’s the colour that prostitutes traditionally wear), that her shoulders were exposed (she was wearing a vest top since we weren’t on project and were in a more touristy area) and that she was white.

We hoped that someone had played a rather unpleasant joke on this kid and that he didn’t know what he was saying. My guess is that he did know what he was saying. When a culture that is as sexually repressed as the Sri Lankan culture is meets a culture that is quite open then there are bound to be misunderstandings. To them it probably seems like all white women are loose women who will sleep with anyone (I mean, some of us live with our boyfriends, some of us have multiple boyfriends (though not usually at the same time)). But to us there are rules and etiquettes about how we treat each other. And going up to a girl you don’t know and saying “Are you fucking?” is not the done thing.

But this experience freaked us out a little bit. It made us feel a bit uncomfortable. It made us even more wary of Sri Lankan men. It made us wish we had a man travelling with us (and that thought made me very angry – not because I don’t like men, I do, some of my very best friends are men, but because I don’t like the fact that women are vulnerable purely because they are women).

Now I don’t think this guy would have hurt us. I don’t think he intended to freak us out as much as he did. I’m not sure what he thought or intended but I don’t think he was dangerous.

But what he did do was make us feel uncomfortable and far less friendly towards the Sri Lankan people. It is thanks to people like him and the freaky guy on the bus once who tried to get me to get off at the wrong stop and go to a hotel with him, and the guy on the train to Galle who was leaning on me despite the fact that there was no one else around him, and the guy who started off being nice but by the end of the conversation was pledging his undying love for me and planning our life together that make me wary about travelling. And make me warn other women that they do have to be careful and that while these people might not be dangerous they will be annoying and unfortunately the fact that we are white and female makes these men think they can treat us badly. And this in a culture that prides itself on respect.

Posted in Clothing, Culture, Sightseeing, Sri Lanka | No Comments »

Sari Shopping

Monday, July 25th, 2011

I’d recommended to the volunteers that they wear saris for teaching. In Sri Lanka all the female teachers have to wear saris. Poor things.

And even though I hate the things, I think wearing them is the right thing to do.

But, if I’m going to ask the volunteers to wear them, I really should wear one too. Dammit.

So I decided I should buy one. I went on my own. I have learnt that going shopping with other people does not promote contentment in Kath.

I had trouble finding a cheap, plain, black sari. No real surprise there.

People in Sri Lanka may be lovely in general but some of them do try hard to screw me over because I’m white. I suffer less than I could but more than I should. This makes sari shopping even less fun that it could be.
“1,000 is too much. I paid 350 in 2009.”
“Ah, but everything is more expensive. What you used to get for 1,000 now costs 5,000.”
“No it doesn’t.”
“1,000 is the cheapest I can do. It’s a good price.”
“No thank you.”
Ah well. I’ll just go somewhere else then and keep looking.

Anyway, I eventually found a dark purple sari that only cost twice what I wanted to pay. It’s a small victory.

I then had to go shopping with the volunteers to help them get their saris. The proverbial blind leading the blind.

The people in the first shop were so bloody irritating that one of the volunteers nearly stormed out. I wouldn’t have blamed her if she had.

Despite the fact that I’d been in the shop last week and been told they had no black saris and that the cheapest they had was over 1,000, it seemed on this day they had a black one for 600. Ah well. Guess that means I can now get rid of the purple thing.

The next shop was better in that the staff actually left us alone (mostly). Oh, and they were playing Bryan Adams which made the whole thing almost bearable.

It was a reasonably successful trip in that we all left the shop in possession of saris, underskirts and blouses.

But we did all desperately need fruit salad afterwards.

Traumatic!

Bryan Adams makes it better, but even he cannot make sari shopping enjoyable.

Posted in Clothing, Sri Lanka, Teaching | 2 Comments »

Clothes Shopping

Tuesday, June 28th, 2011

Clothes shopping is not something that I am known for. It’s not something I enjoy. At all. Though I do get quite excited about developments in mosquito repellent clothing. Craghoppers do a great pair of trousers with drawstrings at the ankles that are just the best thing ever. But that’s about as far as I get with clothes shopping. And I even whinge about the Craghoppers stuff because there isn’t enough of it (i.e. any) that is black. Ah well. Given the stuff stops me getting bitten, or at least reduces substantially the number of bites I get, my whinge about colour can be fairly safely ignored.

Some of you may have been reading this for a while. And you may remember that when I started teaching in Sri Lanka in 2009 that I wore a sari. You may even remember some (or all) of the posts I wrote then about how much I dislike saris as a component of my wardrobe.

I probably also wrote about the actual process of buying the things.

Anyway, I’ve come a long way since then. In lots of areas. My dislike of saris has remained unchanged though. In fact, it has strengthened.

But, I’m in India. And at the start of a new project. Elaine will be here for 10 weeks. I’ll be around for 2 and a half. So I thought we should probably go during week one to get some suitable things to wear for teaching. Elaine didn’t seem keen on the sari idea. We both decided that churidor would be the answer. These are the shirt/trouser things that Indian women wear. The trousers are bunched at the ankle but are usually quite billowy around the legs themselves. The tops are short or long sleeved and the top comes down to mid thigh, or lower. There are slits in the side from about hip level down. This is usually worn with a scarf. The two ends flow backwards over the shoulders (where it is sometimes pinned). The front bit of the scarf hangs down covering most of the chest. Not so different from the shirt and trousers I usually wear so I thought, why not, give it a go.

So we arranged with Josy (Johnson’s sister) that we would go shopping with her on Thursday afternoon. Jo, Josy’s husband, asked why we didn’t ask him. I said it was because he was a boy. But he did offer to drive us, which was very nice of him. :)

We met up at the house on Thursday at the correct time. We got into the car. We headed off. Jo announced that Josy had a hospital appointment and so we would drop her off and Jo would take us shopping. Now, I’m usually not a big fan of gender discrimination, but the reason why we wanted Josy to come with us was because we don’t know anything about churidor and she’s a woman who wears churidor, she will know. But, if it’s Jo, then it’s Jo. He said it would be no problem, he could help. I was sceptical. He was confident. I asked if he’d ever worn churidor before. He was uncharacteristically silent. Well, we’ll see what happens.

What happened is probably best not talked about in too much detail. Suffice it to say the next hour saw me spend more time in the stationery shop than the clothes shop (I had to keep escaping next door to comfort-buy pens and pencils each time it all got too much for me).

One shop invovled Elaine and I having several heated discussions with Jo and the three male sales assistants about what we wanted/needed and what was available.

  • White is not a good idea, have you been in an Indian school? They are dirty, dusty places.
  • Sleeves that short are definitely not ok, this is for teaching.
  • Have we mentioned that we need these to wear for teaching. They are not a tourist souvenir.
  • Are there any trousers smaller than that? Do you mean to say that every Indian woman is wearing trousers that baggy? You could fit every Indian woman into one pair of trousers that big!
  • She needs sleeves that cover her shoulders.
  • Not white.
  • Not so fancy.
  • Do you have anything plainer?
  • No, that won’t fit her, that’s a 30A, she’s a 32D!
  • Showing us extra material that you can sew into this to make it fit her isn’t useful. Can we just get something in the right size please?

Elaine finally demanded that we call Josy and meet her after her appointment.

Which we did. We then went to the shop she usually goes to. This was better already. Elaine managed to get 4 tops. Since she already has some black trousers, she decided there was no need to buy trousers. And she had no intention of wearing a scarf. So she was fine.

My turn. I do not want anything fancy. Plain black please. They didn’t have any. Jo assured me that only Moslems wear plain black. Which I’m sure isn’t true. But anyway, this shop didn’t have any plain black. Ok, how about plain dark brown, dark blue, dark purple, dark red even? I knew this was getting tough. I was prepared to compromise. Nope. It seems the plainest thing that you can get is either black completely covered in sequins. Or black with a two inch peacock blue and gold trim on the hem and sleeves and covering the whole chest. Hmm, not quite my idea of plain.

By this stage, I’d pretty much decided that the whole afternoon had been far too difficult and fraught that I just wouldn’t bother. My trousers and shirts would do me just fine for the remaining week and a bit.

But it was to get worse. I said that it was enough. Jo said it was no problem, he didn’t mind going into more shops. I said yes, but I mind. If I go in to any more shops I will start punching people. I even mimed punching him in the face just to get my point across. Finally I conceded we could try one more shop only.

We tried 4. The last one had something that was reasonably plain. But by this stage there was nothing on earth I was going to be able to look at, try on, like and buy. I tried this one on. Felt like a complete freak. Yelped something about being a human being not a clothes horse. Managed to avoid use of expletives. Took it swiftly off again and walked out.

We went for fruit salad. The world became a happier place. :)

Posted in Clothing, India | 2 Comments »

Why I wear all black

Friday, January 7th, 2011

People keep asking me why I wear all black.

Or they look at me and say: “You still haven’t changed your colour of dress.” “Don’t you like to wear coloured clothing?”
To which my responses are: “Nope.” “Nope.”

And then they ask me why I wear all black.

And this isn’t just people in Sri Lanka. People in the UK also ask. Though not as often. By UK standards it’s a personal question that you wait till you know someone quite well before you ask them. After a week or two. After you’ve bought them a drink in a pub and they’ve bought you one. After you’ve worked out how you each take your tea. In Sri Lanka it comes quite closely after “Sit! Will you.” “Tea!” (This is more an order than a question.) “How old are you?” “Are you married?” “Why aren’t you married?” “What’s your religion?”. “Why do you have short hair?” All of which come before the water for the tea has boiled. :)

Anyway. Here’s the story.

I decided to only wear black (black shirts, black trousers) when I was in Sri Lanka last time. It was while I was standing around at the College of Education one morning waiting for the batch photo. I was wearing a black shirt and black trousers. The women were wearing their nicest saris. The men were wearing shirts, and TIES!! The monks were wearing their usual robes.

I was sick of being asked by all and sundry why I wasn’t dressed up for the photo. I was thinking about how lucky the monks are because no one would ask them why they hadn’t made an effort, what they would do about their hair, why they weren’t wearing beautiful jewelry/ties to match their clothes. And I thought ah, what I need is a religion whose uniform is a black shirt and black trousers. Then I can wear what I want all the time and won’t have to justify it (other than by saying it’s my religion). And I thought, well, I should just do that then. Only, since I don’t like religions I’ll do it without the religion bit.

Most of the reason for this comes from spending three months teaching at Kandy Model School. While I was there I had to wear a sari every day. I hated it. But I had two saris and could just about cope with them. I realised that while I had to wear a necklace to leave the house, I could just take it off once I got out the door. I then realised that I could even leave some mornings with no necklace on at all. And once I worked out how to tie the bloody sari the other teachers and other random women did less coming up to me and fixing it for me (sometimes while I was actually teaching a class).

And then came the most important event in Kath’s sartorial career. The Sports Meet. You must have a beautiful sari for a sports meet. Ok. I’ll wear my red one which people thing is more beautiful than my purple one. No. You need a new and beautiful sari. So I was subjected to Pushpa and her daughter wrapping lots of Pushpa’s saris around me to find one that was beautiful enough. The problem was that Pushpa is taller than I am and wears slightly wider saris. When I wear them, the frill is too big and I am ugly. It’s ok. I can just wear my red one. The principal’s sister gave me a sari. Awesome. It’s new (well, new to me). It’s beautiful (I don’t even know what beautiful means in this country but I do know that by definition every sari is beautiful). It’ll do. Thank god.

But I wasn’t allowed to tie it myself. I was told that Pushpa had to do it because it had to look beautiful. Now I dislike sports meets at the best of time. The fact that they bring back bad memories of sport from school. The fact that this one had caused 6 weeks of missed classes. The fact that I had to look beautiful.

I stood and let Pushpa dress me. I breathed deeply. I counted to ten in any language I could think of. I desperately tried to unclench my teeth. I attempted to make the expression on my face look more like a smile than a grimace. I went downstairs and closed my bedroom door and swore loudly and repeatedly and stamped my foot. This made me feel better.

By the time I’d walked from the house to the street to get the van the sari was starting to fall off. The over-the-shoulder-taily-bit had come loose. I was standing on the bottom of the sari (this is why my frill has to be bigger, or my legs have to be longer). So I got to school. Hid in the office. Redid the sari. Took the stupid necklace off. And mostly survived the day.

At that point, I wanted to never wear clothes again. Wearing black shirts and black trousers is the closest I can get to wearing nothing without wearing nothing. I don’t want to wear nothing. I want to be protected from the heat, the cold, the sun and other people’s prying eyes. I don’t want to expose myself. I want to be well enough dressed so that I won’t stand out. Hence black shirt and black trousers. Presentable enough to wear for job interviews, weddings, funerals, etc. Practical enough to wear for trekking and cycling. And I don’t have to think about it.

Posted in Clothing, Sri Lanka | No Comments »

Mosquito Proof Clothing

Friday, December 24th, 2010

Before I left the UK I did some investigating into mosquito-proof clothing. Not only did I investigate, I actually bought some. 50GBP for a pair of trousers and a shirt – which is ridiculous money in my mind, well ridiculous for clothing but not so ridiculous if it turns out to be mosquito-proof. :)

And they didn’t have them in black so my mossie-proof clothing is the only clothing I currently own that isn’t black. But, important as fashion is to me, it is far more important for me to be mossie-proof. ;) So I succumbed and bought the non-black clothes (the shirt even has silly pink trim on bits of it, dear god).

I was slightly sceptical about the stuff but was keen to see how it would work. The trials in the UK were positive. I wore them several times there and didn’t get bitten once – the fact that I didn’t encounter any mosquitoes is (in my mind) somewhat irrelevant. :)

I have now worn them in Sri Lanka, in mosquito-infested areas. And I can now say – unequivocally – they work!!

I’ve worn my normal clothes in Mahesh’s living room and in Sujith’s house. And I got bitten. I wore my mossie-proof clothes in Mahesh’s living room and in Sujith’s house. And I didn’t get bitten. Well, I didn’t get bitten on the bits of me that were covered by the clothes, the skin on my feet is a veritable dirty blanket of mosquito bites.

But the mossie-proof clothes work!

Oh, and I should mention they appear to be dog-proof as well. I have never been bitten by a dog wearing these trousers. Wish I could say the same for my other trousers. :)

Wonder if Craghoppers do a range of mossie-proof socks. Hmmmm.

48 Mosquito Proof Clothing

Before I left the UK I did some investigating into mosquito-proof clothing. Not only did I investigate, I acutally bought some. 50GBP for a pair of trousers and a shirt – which is ridiculous money in my mind, well ridiculous for clothing but not so ridiculous if it turns out to be mosquito-proof. :)

And they didn’t have them in black so my mossie-proof clothing is the only clothing I currently own that isn’t black. But, important as fashion is to me, it is far more important for me to be mossie-proof. So I succumbed and bought the non-black clothes (the shirt even has silly pink trim on bits of it, dear god).

I was slightly sceptical about the stuff but was keen to see how it would work. The trials in the UK were positive. I wore them several times there and didn’t get bitten once – the fact that I didn’t encounter any mosquitoes is (in my mind) somewhat irrelevant. :)

I have now worn them in Sri Lanka, in mosquito-infested areas. And I can now say – unequivocally – they work!!

I’ve worn my normal clothes in Mahesh’s living room and in Sujith’s house. And I got bitten. I wore my mossie-proof clothes in Mahesh’s living room and in Sujith’s house. And I didn’t get bitten. Well, I didn’t get bitten on the bits of me that were covered by the clothes, the skin on my feet is a veritable dirty blanket of mosquito bites.

But the mossie-proof clothes work!

Oh, and I should mention they appear to be dog-proof as well. I have never been bitten by a dog wearing these trousers. Wish I could say the same for my other trousers. :)

Wonder if Craghoppers do a range of mossie-proof socks. Hmmmm.

Posted in Clothing, Wildlife | No Comments »

Drying Clothes

Friday, December 24th, 2010

It is a well-known fact that clothes need to be washed on a regular basis. See one of my earlier posts for my thoughts on the washing of clothes.

What is equally well-known though frequently not mentioned is the fact that clothes need to dry as well.

Just washing them isn’t actually enough.

In Ratnapura it can take several days for clothes to dry (I mean 3 or 4). In Anuradhapura in the dry season it takes 1 hour. In the wet season it takes 2 days. Do you know how dirty clothes get when they are hanging outside (or inside or in a covered porch) for 2 days in the pouring rain drying?

But I believe that the various monsoons or inter-monsoonal rains are due to finish soon (this month, next month, the month after). At which point I’ll stop whingeing about drying clothes and instead write blog posts marvelling at how quickly stuff dries in the hot, dry sun.

Why is it so difficult for human beings to keep themselves and their stuff clean, warm and dry? Surely all the evolving we’ve been doing should imply we can do these fairly basic things. We can curl our eyelashes for godsakes, why is clean, warm and dry so hard?!?!

PS: I am currently clean, warm and dry. My clothes (all except the ones I’m actually wearing) are at a laundry being laundered so I am expecting them back later today, clean, warm and dry. So the clean-warm-and-dry problem is only intermittent – not that that makes it less of a problem when it is happening. :)

Posted in Clothing, Problems, Sri Lanka | No Comments »

Dog Bite Aftermath

Friday, December 24th, 2010

Here is what happened to me after the dog bite.

In the first post about it I mentioned that I went to the hospital and that they gave me the first rabies booster injection. And I think I mentioned that the doctor didn’t really look at the wound – certainly didn’t treat it but that when I went home, Suchintha’s mother helped me to dress it after I’d cleaned it. I also mentioned that I had to go back to the hospital to get the second booster.

So here’s what happened then.

I bought a larger dressing and removed the sticky plaster. The wound was about 3cm long, the width of a sticky plaster (they only come in one size in this country) is about .5cm. The length of the pad bit of a sticky plaster is about .5cm even if the length of the sticky plaster itself is about 5cm. So I needed a bigger paddy bit. This proved to be tricky. But I did get a giant (10cm x 10cm) surgical dressing and some micropore tape. The pharmacist assured me it wouldn’t stick. The phrase “my arse” springs to mind for two reasons. It stuck. To my arse. Well, the top of my leg.

I found another type of dressing a few days later which is like a sticky plaster but bigger (about 10cm x 20cm) which I thought was an improvement, though way too big, but too big is better than too small. The problem was that the pharmacy in Kandy where I got it seems to be the only one in the country that sells them. So when I got to Anuradhapura I had to Macgyver 4 normal plasters into one big one by carefully cutting the side sticky bit and then overlapping so that I had a big enough pad with no sticky bits in the middle. It mostly worked. :) By this stage there was only the occasional drop of blood on the plaster anyway, so it wasn’t bleeding profusely. Then the plasters came off. Yay! And stayed off. Yay!

On the Saturday I went back to Kandy hospital for the second injection (one injection, two sites, so they stuck half of it in one arm and the other half in the other). That didn’t take too long. But I did get sent from the injection room to the rabies room then back to the injection room where I had to wait for 15 mins (which turned out to be 1hr). But that was ok.

One of the other interesting consequences of the dog bite was antibiotics. The doctor didn’t say anything about antibiotics. But Suchintha’s sister’s husband is a doctor. When he heard about the bite, he asked if I had been given antibiotics. I said I was on Doxycycline (which is a broad spectrum antibiotic that was prescribed as an anti-malarial), but he said that wasn’t enough. So he suggested another one. Suchintha’s mother had some sample packs in the house so I dutifully started taking antibiotics twice a day (plus my anti-malarial, plus some panadol to help with the swelling and the pain). Suchintha’s brother in law said he thought that the doctor had probably been so excited treating a foreigner that he forgot to mention the antibiotics. Which seems a pretty major thing to forget in my mind and a pretty feeble excuse for being overwhelmed. But, I had my own personal medical team helping me out so I was ok. :)

And the final piece of annoyance was my trousers. But I took them to a tailor in Kandy. I needed to get them taken up anyway. Which was lucky. Because the bit they cut off the cuffs they used to mend the rip. Which they did in a day and charged me a very reasonable sum of money for it. So I now have trousers with no holes (except the important holes that you need for getting into the things and sticking your feet out the ends).

And now, the injections are done, the antibiotics are finished, the wound has healed, the trousers are fixed, I can sit down comfortably. It’s all good.

I saw the dog a few days ago and it didn’t bat an eyelid at me. It seemed completely unconcerned by my existence. So that’s also a good thing.

Here endeth the dog bite story.

Posted in Clothing, Health, Problems, Sri Lanka, Wildlife | No Comments »

Rain

Sunday, December 12th, 2010

I’ve come to Sri Lanka at the wrong time. This is the rainy season. I think these are the inter-monsoonal rains, but ever since the tsunami the Sri Lankan weather patterns have been a bit screwy so it’s hard to tell.

But the point is that there is a lot of rain here now.

Rain in Karawita for my first week.
Rain in Colombo for my second week.
Rain in Kandy for my third week.
Rain in Anuradhapura for my fourth week.

In Colombo and Kandy there has been quite severe flooding. I’ve not been too badly affected by it, other than getting a lie in one morning in Colombo because Sujith couldn’t go into work till about 11 because of the flooding on the roads. In Kandy I got the bottoms of my trousers quite wet when I was waiting on the pavement for a bus (under cover). The bus arrived and I had to step across the very overflowing gutters to the dry(ish) bit in the middle of the road. It was a leap of about 1.5m which is a little beyond my competency level so instead I just bit the bullet and splashed.

Getting clothes dry is an issue. And given I only have 2 pairs of trousers, 2 t-shirts, 4 shirts (I got two extras made in India) and three sets of underwear, it is quite important that I get my clothes washed and dried in a reasonable time. I may have to buy more trousers. Hmmmm.

In Kandy and Anuradhapura the pattern tends to be that the morning is nice and sunny and glorious and the afternoon is rainy. The start of the rain tends to coincide with school finishing. :) Though some days the mornings are wet too. I don’t think I’ve had a single completely dry day since I arrived. Ah well. I like rain.

And in Sri Lanka when it rains, it really rains. The heavens open. It buckets down. It tips it down. It pisses down. It rains cats and dogs.

My Nepali raincoat and my waterproof trousers have had several outings and are working quite well. :)

Splash!

Posted in Clothing, Sri Lanka | No Comments »

Kanyakumari

Monday, December 6th, 2010

Kanyakumari is the southern tip of India. It’s where three seas meet: the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean and the Bay of Bengal. Having come so far and being so close to it I thought it would be a nice place to visit.

Since we had a Sunday with nothing to do, we decided to go. Or rather, I decided to go and Asok, Guru and Stan kindly decided to come too. Jo, Josy and Johny would have like to come too but unfortunately they were too busy.

Asok organised a car and we left nice and early on Sunday morning. We stopped for breakfast. Masala dhosa – really nice. :)

Back in the car and from Kerala we entered Tamil Nadu. Not much different. Instead of Malayalam, the writing was now in Tamil, but since I speak neither it didn’t make that much difference. The roads in Tamil Nadu are better than those in Kerala though.

We were heading for a palace then a temple then the town of Kanyakumari itself. Cool. We knew where we were going. The driver knew where we were going. I spent most of the trip asleep – which was annoying. One of my superhero skills seems to be the ability to sleep on any form of transport – trains, buses, boats, cars, taxis, three wheelers. Fortunately I’ve not slept on a motorbike yet – I think that would be very, very bad indeed. Unfortunately, I often want to enjoy the scenery and instead find myself fast asleep. Ah well. I think I needed the sleep. :)

Anyway I was awake when we got to a few kms from the temple and discovered that we’d missed the palace. By about 25kms. Now, I wasn’t particularly bothered by this, but it would be nice to see the palace so we decided to turn round and go back. Asok was a bit pissed off, but Stan, Guru and I didn’t really mind that much. A few minutes later the car broke down. He he he he. You have to laugh when things like this happen, otherwise you’ll get annoyed and angry and pissed off and depressed and desperate to go to home. I was none of these things. It’s all part of the adventure.

So we piled out of the car (when there was a suitable break in the lorries, vans, motorbikes, three wheelers etc bearing down upon us). We left the driver with his car and piled into a three wheeler – Kath sitting sideways on Asok’s knees and we went back to the temple.

This is a temple where the men (Hindu or otherwise) have to take their shirts off. Now, I’m all in favour of equality of the sexes, but this was one situation where I was glad that women had different rules to follow. Though, to be honest, I think it would have been better if neither gender had to remove clothing.

Some bits of the temple were really pretty. Some bits weren’t. I’m not Hindu so wasn’t really that interested in the religious side of it. But I did think it interesting that the only signs that were in English were the ones that tell you how to make donations and how much all the various offerings cost. The connection between religion and capitalism never fails to bring a smile to my face. :)

After we’d finished there (and avoided buying temple tat from the shops outside) we got a taxi in to town. Guru was now our official translator since we were in Tamil Nadu (his native state) and he spoke the best Tamil of the lot of us. Thanks Guru! Interestingly, he can’t read or write in Tamil. He is very well educated and very intelligent. He can speak Tamil – it is his mother tongue. He just can’t read or write. All his schooling was done in either Hindi or English (both of which he can read, write and speak). Cool.

We found a really nice air conditioned hotel that had a nice restaurant. It was rather hot outside and an iced coffee was just what the doctor ordered – and it was a really good iced coffee too!

After lunch (when will people in this part of the world learn that toast is not the same thing as slightly warmed bread? – Toast should not be floppy!) we went to docks to get the ferry over to the two islands that sit just off the coast.

Guru, Stan, Asok and the islands

Now this was odd. We waited for the boat. When the next one arrived, they let a load of us onto the dock so we could queue again to get on the boat. But this time boys had to queue separately from girls. Ok, fine. I can be a girl if I really have to. So I got into the women’s queue and the others stayed in the boys’ queue. Just before we got onto the boat we had to pick up a life jacket from a big pile sitting on the dock. The women got in the back of the boat, the men got in the front and then they all proceeded to mix up and sit next to each other anyway. So I’m not sure quite what the separation was all about. I do have some advice for anyone thinking of taking the same boat trip in future, sharpen your elbows before leaving the house in the morning, you’ll need them to get on the boat!

The first little island has a temple with a sacred footprint, it also has a meditation cave. I was more impressed with the psychedelic bunny rabbit rubbish bins.

Bunny Bin

Then a really weird thing happened. I was standing around with Guru waiting for Stan and Asok who were in the meditation cave when some random Indian guy came up to me and asked me if he could take a photo of me with his baby. Brave man! Fortunately, the small child did not break, get dropped or start screaming – which was nice. Usually people go to extraordinary lengths to stop weird strangers from touching their children, this guy actually shoved his first born into my reluctant arms. Ah well. If it made him happy then why not!

We wandered around the island/rock thing for a bit – it’s not very big. Didn’t buy anything from the book/tat shops. Did admire the windfarm which is further along the coast.

Back on the boat (no gender separation this time) to the next little island which has a giant statue. We decided to just look at it from the boat and not actually get off. So we went back to the mainland for some photos. Then back to the same hotel for an iced tea this time – it’s a hard life.

Since Guru assured us that the sunset would be crap, we decided to get the bus back home a bit early. If we had a car we probably would have stayed, but we had at least 2 hours on the bus to Trivandrum and then had to get from there back to Poonthura so we figured an early start would be a good thing.

It would have been a better thing if the bus had left when we got on it, rather than 45 minutes after we got on it. But that’s part and parcel of bus travel really. The bus was to be expected: noisy, uncomfortable, dirty, smelly, somewhat dangerous. But nothing worse than what I’m used to from Sri Lanka. And given my extraordinary superhero skills, I slept most of the way. Despite the ridiculously excessive use of the horn.

We saw bits of the sunset from the bus – which was very nice and more varied than it would have been if we’d just stayed at the coast. So that was really nice.

We got back to Trivandrum and found an Indian Coffee House to have some dinner. Then a three wheeler back to Poonthura. The family were out so we sat in the office chatting till they got back. Then sat around chatting to them for a bit too before bed. All in all a lovely day. And now I can say that I made it from Cambridge to the southern tip of India overland. Cool!!! :)

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