Tuesday, January 31, 2023

Travelogue 2023/2 North Kerala Coast by train

Travel in India

"Nothing comes easy in India. There are always unexpected complications. And even the shortest walk on the street becomes an adventure."

Despite massive modernization in India, those statements have remained true for the past 30 years. Sometimes it is tiring that you always have to pay attention, you always have to adapt to a new situation, you always have to process new impressions, you always have to filter out what you do and don't want to hear, you always get talked to (however friendly). But you also get a lot in return, you see fantastic things, experience the strangest things, talk to special people.

For two weeks we traveled down the coast of North Kerala. Mostly by train, mostly fairly short journeys. We took slow regional trains, sometimes with a seat, sometimes squeezed together standing in the hallway. Open windows provided much needed ventilation. Our trains ran on time or were delayed by up to half an hour.


Arab influences

For more than 2000 years there have been trade routes between Arabia and the Malabar coast. As a result, the first Christians were here in AD 50 and the first Muslims in AH 10. The smaller coastal towns are still predominantly Islamic - vegetarian food is less common here than in other parts of India. Maybe because of that old commercial spirit people are more open than I'm used to in India. They spontaneously smile at you and welcome you to India.

Besides those ancient middle eastern influences, there are also newer ones. Today, hundreds of thousands of Indians work in the Gulf. With the money they earn there, they build large modern houses. Every village, every town has sprawling suburbs with beautiful villas. And you see it in the many shawarma shops, the mint drinks, the gold shops.

At a tea stall we spoke to some young men who were constantly traveling back and forth between different Gulf states, trading in expensive cars, gold and whatnot. Real wheeler dealers. In a garden restaurant we spoke to a man who had worked in Dubai for 20 years at management level, who was now taking early retirement and had bought a plot of land in the interior of Kerala with the money he earned, where he started farming as a hobby. In both cases they paid for our drinks.

Forts, backwater and beach

The Portuguese, the Dutch, the English, the French and various regional warlords fought each other for centuries for influence over the prosperous coastal strip. You can still see many cultural influences, the most tangible are a number of forts. We visited five. That varied between a search for some overgrown remains of a wall, and a large restored complex with walking paths, bastions and lookout towers.

Most forts have stepwells, where you can descend to groundwater level. They are less beautifully decorated than in North India, but functional if your fort is besieged. Some have (secret?) tunnels to get to the sea.

Kasargod


Kasargod was a bigger place than expected. We settled on the edge of town, near the new bus station. There were hotels and restaurants, and quite surprisingly a group of food and drink stalls where young people gathered after school. Even boys and girls mixed with each other.


The thoroughfares were congested with dirty and noisy traffic. But as soon as we turned into a side street, we walked through a rural area. From endless noise and hooting to almost serene silence. Finally we got to the place we were looking for, where the ruins of Kasargod Fort are supposed to be. Everything was overgrown and with difficulty we recognized the remains of a bastion and a watchtower.


5 km outside the city was the well-maintained Fort Chandragiri. The perimeter of the fort was still completely intact or restored. Thick high walls surround a field the size of two football pitches. There was a footpath along the inside of the outer walls, with a number of bastions. You had a good view over the river, the estuary and inland - a good place for a fort.


We had gone there with a rickshaw "the long way 'round", but we walked back, just like the locals, over the railway bridge over the wide river into the town. It was a long walk, and in the meantime it had become quite warm and we had run out of water. When we arrived at the almost 1400 year old Malik Deenar Juma mosque it was immensely busy there. Today was the last day of a festival in honor of Deenar (who also founded the Mangalore mosque we visited), and people had come from far and wide. We were warmly welcomed and a friendly gentleman fetched us a few bottles of water.

Bekal

In Bekal we lived in a kind of mini-resort, literally in the shadow of the fort. The peacocks walked between the coconut trees. Close by was a beach where you could sway in the waves of the Arabian Sea. And within walking distance was a lunch restaurant where they twice cooked an evening meal especially for us. Sublime home cooked meals. The lady was from Bangalore and felt anything but at home in this small hamlet, where they lived because her husband had to maintain the family temple.

Payyanur



In Payyanur we made a long trip over the backwaters - river arms and lagoons separated from the sea by a narrow strip of land. Surrounding it are small communities and coconut plantations. When we looked for information about departure times at the jetty, we were treated to fresh coconuts by the neighbors. Normally you drink them with a straw, without that it became a huge mess. We saw a video of it the next day on the phone of one of the crew members!

We were on a ferry that zigzagged back and forth between several jetties. Most people just crossed to the other side, but we eventually covered about 10 km as the crow flies. Some parts it was just us and the five-man crew. The views, the water birds, the fishing boats, the palm-fringed coastline: it couldn't get more beautiful than that.

Kannur


In Kannur Fort we got a personal tour from a local policewoman. She came towards us when E leaned over a fence. Instead of whistling her back, the two ladies climbed together over the walls and battlements of the fortress. She knew quite a bit about the history, and the three of us studied the tombstone of Susanna, the young wife of the former Dutch commander. The text was in weathered old Dutch. The policewoman had an older photo on which the text was less weathered. Finally we managed to decipher everything. We promised to record it and send it to her.

Kozhikode

Kozhikode was by far the largest city in North Kerala. Busy but also with a more metropolitan atmosphere, e.g. at the tables on the lawn of our hotel and in the mall. In the oldest part of the city you will find 14th century wooden mosques with beautiful carvings. As in Mangalore, the old districts along the coast were the oldest and poorest. We also visited theold Tali temple and the archaeological museum.


Kozhikode was our last coastal town this journey. From here we went inland. Via Palghat and Dindigul (two more forts!) we reached Trichy.
Practical tips to make this trip: Lily's Mini Travel Guide

Thursday, January 12, 2023

Travelogue 2023/1 Amsterdam-Dubai-Mangalore-Kuala Lumpur by lowcost carrier and narrow-body

From Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur with one-way tickets booked separately, with low-cost airlines, with small planes? Yes, you can, with stops in Dubai and small airports in South India.

Amsterdam-Dubai

A one-way ticket to Dubai with Transavia was so cheap that we didn’t mind the early departure. Although I wasn't so sure about that when we were waiting at the gate at 5AM. We had spent the past 1½ hours looking for security and immigration counters that were open. It makes sense that not everything is open at night, but there could have been better signage...

It was strange, flying for 7 hours in a narrow body aircraft without service. But the staff was very friendly and everything went fine. We just had not expected to be dropped off at a low-cost terminal in Dubai. Kind of an old shed. No metro here, as in the shiny terminal across the tarmac. It took a while to find out how to take the bus into the city, but in the end that worked out well.

At dusk we walked the last bit to our hotel.

Deira



We concentrated on Deira, the old town on the north side of the creek. Well, not all was old, our hotel was at the site where the fish market used to be.

Across a major road was the Gold Souk, which is a maze of ancient streets and lanes.

You have the hypermodern Dubai with skyscrapers and shiny malls. You have the new construction like in our neighborhood, which is quite tasteful. You have the 60s-80s buildings along the main streets in the old city, ugly concrete buildings of 3 to 4 floors that contain all those gold shops. And you have the small alleys behind them where they forgot to demolish the houses from the time they used mud as a construction material.

We walked a bit along the gold shops that were on the tourist route, where you were constantly harassed, and then entered the smaller streets of the perfume market and the textile market. It was very pleasant and peaceful there. We were admiring the colorful dresses in a shopwindow when a lady approached us and said that this was a great store. Under her black robe you could see the edge of such a colorful dress. When I made a remark about that, she opened her black robe wide to allow herself to be admired.

In the area in and around the Gold Souk, most residents, shopkeepers, restaurant staff and gold traders are from Kerala. We got talking to a salesman who came from Kasargod - the first town in Kerala that we want to visit. We immediately got his cousin's phone number.

All in all it was a nice trip around the back of the Gold Souk.

The great thing about Dubai is the mishmash of half the world you see. Tourists from half the world, workers from half the world, everyone with their own clothes and their own habits. An Arab lady all covered in black; a Philipina in shorts and a tank top; a stout lady in an African dress; a Russian with too flashy clothes and too much make-up and too bleached hair.

Food is also available from all over the world, we ate Indian and Iraqi.

Dubai-Mangalore

For this route we had bought a one-way ticket from Air India Express. It was only a three-hour flight, again with a 737, but due to time difference and delays, we arrived in Mangalore at 6PM. It took a very long time before we could enter the country. Not because of bad will, but because of ignorance. It seemed that so few foreigners entered the country here that the officials were unfamiliar with the procedures and the equipment.

Once in the city and in our hotel, we were a bit overwhelmed by the huge transition from organized Dubai to the total chaos of India. After six years we had forgotten how dirty everything is, how everything once broken, stays broken, how big the holes are in the road and that there are even bigger holes next to the road, how you are constantly submerged in noise and air pollution. Mangalore seemed to have all the lesser sides of India, without the mysticism of Junagadh for example or the atmosphere of a city like Mysore.

Mangalore

The next day we were able to discover a few gems in Mangalore.

In the morning we walked through the oldest district, where it was very busy with carts and lorries loading and unloading goods in the narrow streets, to the river. We took a ferry to the other side. There was a long and narrow peninsula between the river and the Arabian Sea. It had a village feel, there were more cows, goats and cats on the street than cars, and the houses seemed to be built on dune sand. We zigzagged through narrow alleyways until we reached the beach: miles of white sand. Birds and fishermen hunted for fish.

In the evening we visited the third oldest mosque in India, almost 1400 years old. Built in the year 22 of the Islamic era, only 5 years after the death of the Prophet. This could happen so quickly because of the existing trade routes between Arabia and the Malabar coast. The oldest wooden part was somewhat hidden behind a newer hall. An old man said that women were not allowed to go to the back. But when I got there and got talking to some of the elders, they were okay with me to go and fetch E. She made an impression by knowing the name of the father of the sultan who renovated the mosque. Together we admired the ancient architecture and lavish carvings. Very impressive.

Trichy-Kuala Lumpur

We traveled by train and bus from Mangalore to Trichy (*).

We had selected the flight from Trichy to Kuala Lumpur with AirAsia because it was a day-time flight. But after our booking it was canceled and we were transferred to a night flight. The small airport of Trichy was easy to reach, quiet and well-managed. It had as many flights to Dubai, Singapore and Kuala Lumpar as to Indian cities. On board the Airbus 320, another narrow-body, the East Asian flight attendants caught the eye. And the uncomfortable chairs. Suddenly four hours of flying was a long time. Of the three flights, this was by far the least comfortable.

It was an interesting experience: with one-way tickets booked separately, with low-cost airlines, with small planes from Amsterdam to Kuala Lumpur. All in all a successful experiment.

More

(*) How we traveled onwards from Mangalore: North Kerala Coast by train
How we traveled onwards from Kuala Lumpur: The Jungle Railway (MY) and Pattani Sultanate (TH), by train