Return from India

We're back! Merry Christmas! Happy New Year! Hope all of you are well and you somehow took in the holidays with some cheer, joy, peace, good family and friends. This year we trekked a bit south west to the land of spice and tea. India has been calling us for a while, actually, specifically our friend Cyriac and his family have been calling us to visit them, but India has also been a bucket list item for me (Ben is on his second round now) and it was nice to have a full four weeks to definitively checkmark that goal quite clearly (not some stop over in an airport or all-inclusive dealio, just to say we did it:). We started our journey on December 23rd and headed south to first spend a bit of time with our friends in Chengdu, China, where Ben was living as a student before we were married. Our friends have 3 beautiful, fun, fantastic and hilarious little girls who we revelled in our time with, giving us the kid fix we needed as we are still DINKs for the moment (hehe, whoever thought of that acronym is FU-NNAY!). We then moved onto our first destination: Bangalore! This is where we just did a stop off and intro to India. Sights, sounds, smells, and warmth, oh to be warm! (Nice change from our -20 degree weather). Next we bused down south to Mysore where we stayed with a friend who is working at a women's clinic just outside of the main city. We spent an evening at the Brindaven Gardens where there were water and light shows playing to wonderful beaty bollywood-esque music and a grand finale done to the Indian anthem. What a roar that erupted when that song tumbled onto the track! Quite thrilling to hear all the excitement. Children were everywhere, brought as school groups, barefoot and bright-eyed, and quite late at night, but nothing stops a good time, good food and an evening in a beautiful place. For a couple days we wandered around the rest of the city visiting the Mysore Palace and touring up the mountainside to some temple areas. Temples are something of a contemplation, watching people in their pilgrimages, prostrate and shackled in face-paint, lots to wonder about. What was actually particularly more thrilling was the view from high above the city, seeing everything sprawling out from far away. Mysore is where we started seeing a lot more greenery, but boy were we in for lots more as we moved further south. We then said goodbye to our friend Padmaraj, and headed to Sultan Bathery in Wayanad, with a friend, Manual, who became a tour guide of sorts and arranged a number of private tours through some tea, coffee and spice plantations. We spent some time with him and his beautiful wife and children and then headed further south, though not before another private tour of a tea processing factory, where we were awarded a special vacuum sealed 2 kilo bag of pure, untainted tea. I am not sure if you are aware of how unheard of this is, since in India, every tea is a mix tea, no teas are ever purely from one place, this is done for a number of reasons, taste and flavour blending being one, something to do with competition and fair markets is another, whatever the case, we were excited to be given such a special gift. Now we continued on to where we would would finally meet up with our dear friend Cyriac and his wife Hephzibah and their two boys Joses and Johan in Mannarkkad. From here we took various short trips up into the mountains, down to Palakkad and onto Cochin to see the Chinese fishnets. A bit more time in Mannarkkad and we made our way to Kannur where we met the beach, which in some places seemed a lot like Tofino! We spent some time roaming the city, raiding cheap book stores (in India you will find books brand new, same as you would in north america, but a third of the price), eating more paratha and chilly chicken, and falling in love with Saint Angelo fort. A bit of time was spent driving into the hills where we met Cyriac's father and saw the house that Cyriac built for him. We explored the property, collected some small harvest items, learned how to tap rubber from rubber trees and ate a fabulous meal on the rooftop under the stars and coconut trees. This completed our time with Cyriac and his family, as we made our way to the train station to catch an overnight sleeper to Goa, a short stop on the beach for a few days (note to all: never stay on the north end of Goa beach unless you like to party all night and lie in garbage while you tan on the beach.) Not much tanning for us, a bit of exploring and we simply enjoyed our fantastic hotel and then we said goodbye for our last leg into Delhi. Delhi is a whole other world. The north itself is a whole other world. Another note: if you ever decide to visit the north, don't visit Delhi for more than a couple days, even the locals would give the same advice. The north is quite unkempt, to be polite, and there are many more shady locals to be wary of. Watch your bags, your purses, your passports, your naivety and your sanity. They will all be watched and tested. On the upside, more bucket list items: the Taj, the Agra Fort, the Lotus Temple, Qutub Minar, and a few others. Good to see these brilliantly fantastic monuments....though smaller than I expected, the Taj was like a little miniature of what I thought it would be, but really, I would never go north again, though apparently Mumbai is a whole other world of its own, and a few other notable places as well, overall the south really was a dream, for landscape, richness and people. Doesn't compare to Canada, but a fairly wonderful experience all the same. So we finished in Delhi, and headed back to Chengdu for a few days with only some pictures, tea, spices, and churidars to show for it. I am sure we will share more with any of you we meet up with later on, but that gives you a good overview of our trip for now. Until next time, Namaste!