sleeping through to serendipity

Last time I wrote I was still in Mysore and about to head to Bangalore with Rohit.

Rohit and I arrived at his mother's place a little late, so we had some yummy fish dinner and went to bed not too long after. The next day (Saturday), since I had missed the bull temple the last time I was in Bangalore, I asked Rohit if he wanted to do that, but he wasn't so keen so instead we went to a bookstore in MG road area. After we met up with a couple of his friends, Akshyat and Sandesh and went for lunch. Then we started a drinking tour of Bangalore, some of which is a little hazy...

*time passes*

Sunday I had a killer hangover (no thanks to Akshyat who, when asked for a glass of water, interprets this as a whiskey and water). I was supposed to catch an overnight bus to Kochi, but then the bus company called to tell me that sleeper I'd booked wasn't available and I would just be on a semi-sleeper deluxe. I've had some experiences on buses now, and I didn't really want to find out how "deluxe" this new bus would be, so with a bit of confusion and help from Rohit I managed to get it changed to the next day when I could for sure have a sleeper. I gave Reza a call and he invited me to go to a jazz concert with him, to which I happily (although a bit tiredly since the hangover was proving difficult to shake) agreed. Reza came and picked me up from Rohit's and off we went.

The concert was good, although ear shatteringly loud. I felt like I could be in Canada, only everyone was brown. Reza and I slept at Pouria's and the next day Reza borrowed a scooter and took me all over town. We went for some amazing biriyani and then he took me all the way to the bull temple. The bull temple was really far out and a total bust. It's one of the lamest sights I've seen yet, but the scooter ride adventure made it worthwhile, not to mention I had been saying I wanted to go for weeks. The scooter ride was actually a bit terrifying at points, like when you're driving in the space between two buses. I feared for my life a bit, but lo and behold, here I am still!

Anyway, poor Reza, I made him drive me everywhere on Sunday, but he was super nice about it. He took me to the bus station to catch my sleeper and it was delayed, so we had some dinner and then I took off. About an hour into the ride I realized that I needed to pee, but I figured that there would be a rest stop at some point so I tried to ignore it and go to sleep. Every once in awhile I would wake up, really really needing to pee, but when I saw we were moving I would just go back to sleep. I had asked the bus dude (not the driver, but his sidekick guy) to let me know when we got to Kochi, it was clear his English was barely existent, but I thought he understood. After all, my destination was written on my ticket! Originally, we were supposed to be in Kochi at 7 or 7:30 am, I couldn't quite remember, but something like that. So when I awoke and it was 7:30am I wasn't too alarmed that I wasn't in Kochi yet. I got out of my bunk and went and sat in one of the chairs- oh my god I had to pee so bad!! But I kept telling myself I'd be in Kochi any minute now.

At 8:30am I started to wonder, so I asked another passenger and he said we would be at our final destination: Kottayam, about 85 minutes past Kochi, in about 10 minutes. I was surprised, but I thought, well hell, change of plans I guess. First thing's first: find toilet.

Getting off the bus in Kottayam I quickly looked around and found a hotel restaurant where I hustled to to use the loo. *relief* Then I decided to take a coffee in the family room and read my Lonely Planet to see what there was to do in this place.

I asked the server for a coffee and he said "mutton? chicken? fish?"
hm... so I said "no, coffee"
"mutton? chicken? fish?"
Clearly I was required to take breakfast, and not being hungry I didn't want to waste any animal life so I just said "veg" to which he waggled his head appreciatively and wandered off. The coffee was disgusting, but my first veg Kerala breakfast was very tasty, so it turned out to be quite nice that he had insisted on the grub, even if I couldn't finish it.

In the tour book it appeared that there's not too much to do in Kottayam, but that there is a 2 1/2 hour ferry ride across the lake and in the backwaters to Alleppey. I decided to do that and took a rickshaw down to the boat jetty. I wanted to book a place for when I got there, but the landline of the place I was trying was all funky, so I called Mum and Dad so they could find the mobile number for me (funny to be calling them to find a number for me in the middle of nowhere!). I got through and arranged for my pickup on the other side. Then I had some time to kill so I went for a chai and then I went to use the pay and use toilet at the jetty.

On the outside of the building it is painted in big letters "NO SMOKING" and then the side for ladies and gents is very clearly indicated. I stepped into the "ladies" room, but there were about 6 old dudes sitting around smoking cigarettes. Right. As soon as they saw me 5 of them scuffled out leaving just one old dude, so I asked him how much to use the toilet and he said 5Rs and I paid. The toilet was very dirty, which is not so unusual, full of shit with no running water, but still not the norm. When I opened the bathroom stall door the old man approached me with a bottle of water to wash my hands so I started heading towards the sink, but he cut me off and started edging me into the stall again. It was quite odd, but I didn't really know what he was doing at first. He was touching my hands and then I saw that creepy little glint in his eye and his hands starting to move up to my chest and in disgust I just pushed this little old man (I almost knocked him over!) and grabbed my bag and left. Wow.

The ferry was nice, the views were beautiful, but I had some young Indian men chatting with me and I stupidly gave one of them my number. Initially, I suppose I was thinking it might be nice to grab dinner with them in Alleppey since I didn't know what I was going to do there alone. Anyway, nothing came of it, only that I eventually blocked that guy from my phone because he called me about 10 times a day for the next 3 days afterwards!

Ok, I'm going to cut this story off... I want to get out of here, but I'll summarize super quick: went on a overnight houseboat cruise with 4 other people, one of whom was this cool woman from Australia, Nancy. Nancy and I are now traveling together. We went to Kochi on Thursday and did a bunch of sightseeing yesterday. Now we're on our way to Ooty together, but right now we're in Coimbature.

Anyway, I'm glad that I slept through my stop in Kochi, because otherwise I wouldn't have met Nancy, and I might not have gone on a houseboat given my experience in Kashmir, so it seems I slept my way through to serendipity...