Thursday, April 12, 2007

Trekking and Flying and Floating

Well what's happened recently?
If you remember many months ago I said I would NEVER again take the over night sleeper bus. Yep you guessed right. I once again took the overnight sleepless bus.
I arrived in Sirsi about 7am and we went to the village clinic for the day. Nothing that special there, except that once again I spent the night a further 40km deep into the forest/jungle. This place is really special. The next day instead of going to the clinic I went trekking with the uncle of family.
We set off at 8am and headed out of the farm deep into the forest following the river down stream. When I say trek, it's not really a trek. No one comes here except for a few local fishermen to make a catch for their families. Once we had joined the main river we had to hack our way down through the jungle and climb down the waterfall. This is where I made my first mistake. Because the rocks were so slippy I had to remove my shoes and I dropped them and got my socks wet. What better conditions to create foot blisters than wet socks?
Pretty soon I was walking bare foot across the boulders as we worked a further 3 km up river. This was fine for the first 2km until the sun heated the rocks so hot that I had to walk along the river bank until I was forced by the biting ants to put my shoes on. Soon after this I was numb to everything from the shin down and could enjoy the view as we approached the first dramatic waterfall. I was told that I was the first foreigner to visit this waterfall since it was surveyed by some Sir of the empire in 1938. I believed him for there was no obvious way to the waterfall and no track at all. The second waterfall was even more spectacular and the water refreshing as I jumped in for a swim and a welcome drink. By now it was 6hrs since we set off and I came to understand we had to find our way up and out of the valley on our own. This honestly nearly killed me, we climbed and hacked and climbed and hacked. I was just giving up hope as I passed the 50th funnels shaped web before I saw a can of kingfisher beer.
Yes, finally some sign of civilization. The I began to wonder. Is dropping a can of kingfisher really bad for the environment? Does dropping a plastic bag effect the animals? Well here deep in the wilderness it surly can not be bad. Who cares?
I think we sometimes mix up environmental pollution for ugliness. I'm sure that decaying plastic bags and metal cans don't "offend" the bears and elephants and ants. Perhaps the sun was playing tricks on me? Perhaps I was dehydrated I clearly had too much time to think about some bloody old can of lager. I decided to stop and pen my protest about environmental pollution by carving my thoughts into a 300 year old tree trunk with my Swiss army knife. We finally made the top track where there is a viewing point for tourist over the main falls. My feet were killing me, I had blisters, cuts, bites and bruises; I was dehydrated and generally looked like death, but strangely felt pretty great after the experience which lasted some 8hrs.
That night I thought I would be able to sleep in the coffin like bed on the bus. I was wrong.

I had about a week to recover before my brothers arrival. I was worried I would not be able to walk on our trip to Kerela. But in 3-4 days my feet were almost like new again. Dan and Lee arrived at about 5am and I had arranged for the only auto-rickshaw driver that does not look like a deviant to collect them. He is a patient and very honest and trustworthy. Dan and Lee where pretty beat when they arrived, so being a good host I showed them the floor and told them to get some sleep for in about 10hrs we were off back to the airport to catch a flight to Trivandrum the capital city of Kerela. Once in Trivandrum we took a taxi straight to the coastal town of Varkala and chilled for a couple of days on the cliff top in the hammocks and sampled the local food. Lee and Dan seamed pretty chilled and were handling India very well. After a few days we took the local train north to hire a boat house and crew before setting off in our floating palace into the "backwaters". This was really a highlight, the communities on the waters edge, the green lush vegetation and we were lucky enough to see the first signs of the approaching monsoon. At night (just after we sent the boy for beers) we had a huge downpour, and great light show.
Lee got his first Indian haircut (about 30p including 100% tip). The next day we took a 3hr taxi back to Varkala before heading back to Trivandrum for the night. At this point I took the night train over land on my journey back to Bangalore via Oooty the mountain hill station and Mysore as Dan and Lee took their flight to Delhi to see the Taj Mahal in Agra. They land back in Bangalore tonight.
Tomorrow is their last night and we'll hit the town and try not to get arrested.

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