Travel in India
"Nothing
comes easy in India. There are always unexpected complications. And even the
shortest walk on the street becomes an adventure."
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.
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 our last coastal town this journey. From here we went inland. Via Palghat and Dindigul (two more forts!) we reached Trichy.
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