The Backwaters of Fort Kochi

The hostel I'm staying at is right next what are known as the backwaters of Fort Kochi. When I was in Goa and trying to book a tour of the backwaters, the pot-smoking travel agent dismissively referred to the backwaters as "where all the [expletive] flows out from inland to the sea." Knowing India... there's probably a lot of truth in that. Nonetheless, the waters are actually pretty cool to see. Just don't think about it too much.

Kashi Art Cafe -
where if you tilt your head just so, you too can have a stiff neck

When I woke up, I re-met the three dudes staying in my dorm. It turns out they grew up together in Muscat. If you, like me, have never heard of Muscat, then you, like me, would probably also nod your head, smile, and continue engaging in conversation until it is later revealed that Muscat is a city in Oman (the capital, actually, though that tidbit didn't come up in conversation). They've since all scattered, but are reuniting here in Fort Kochi for a few days. Also, one of them is the Indian doppleganger of my friend BP from college. It was uncanny not only how much the two of them looked the same, but also had the same outspoken "whatever, I'll do what I want" personality. Definitely made me do a double-take a few times throughout the day.

Kashi Art Cafe - "We're expat-friendly!"

We all went to brunch together at this awesome spot called the Kashi Art Cafe. I think this was the first time I'd eaten fresh fruit in a long, long time. I'd been warned numerous times that you can't trust the fruit here because it's washed in the water you can't drink. At this point I've been sick so often, even while being careful about what I eat, so why continue to deprive myself if I'm going to be sick anyway? Plus that fruit looked GOOD. One of the dude's brought his girlfriend to brunch with us and she spent the rest of the day with us too.

The view from the airline's 6th-story office. Not bad, Oman Air.

After brunch, one of the dudes, ROR, has to change his flight but to do so needed to physically go to the airline's office for some asinine "this is how it's done in India" reason. So we took a ferry (we're in the backwaters, remember?) to get there.

I love ferries. Maybe it's because I don't spend all that much time out on the water, but ferries are awesome. They're like buses... but in the water! Water buses! Mind-blowing.

WATER BUSES ARE AWESOME

Afterward ROR's successful flight change, we went to another bar for drinks. While I was there, I was telling the others about my journey to find my roots. ROR's family is from Kerala and he was like "well, we'll have to make sure you find them while you're here." He also started trying to teach me a few words in Malayalam, the language spoken here. Turns out instead of assuming I speak Hindi, people should really be assuming I speak Malayalam. I'm terrible at languages though, so I pretty much immediately forgot every word he tried to teach me.

The food wasn't... meal-y, so in the cab on the way home we stopped by Domino's. Because where better to eat in India than Domino's? (ok, ...it actually was pretty good.) We finished off the night at a seaside bar. Backwater-side bar? It was on the water. It was cool.

CONTINUE ON to Fort Kochi Part 3: Kerala: An Anthropologist's Dream

Do Not Pass Goa, Do Not Collect Good Times

Me:               So what should I do in Anjuna [the part of Goa where I am staying]

Cab driver:     Do you do drugs?

Me:               No.

Cab driver:     People go to Anjuna to do drugs.

Me:               ...Oh.

I'm definitely sick. Again. I'm just glad I'm in Goa because if you're going to be sick, it might as well be in a beach resort place, right?

I had to take a selfie because there was NO ONE ELSE HERE

Turns out, Goa isn't all it's cracked up to be. That little intro vignette on this post was a word-for-word conversation I had with my cab driver. I chose Anjuna after some minimal googling and by looking to see where there was the greatest density of hostels, which is generally a good sign of where there will be activity. Guess I didn't read thoroughly enough about what goes on in Anjuna. I certainly had some role to play in all of this by choosing to come here during monsoon season. Apparently, this is the place where people have crazy parties, except for right now when the place is totally dead.

I arrived at my hostel, which is down kind of a sketchy dirt road. Which is fine, it was daylight out. The proprietor of said hostel was a woman with a Christian name. She's the first Christian I've met in India, but it turns out there's a sizable Christian population in the south of India. She's been running this place for many, many years. She started out just renting out a room on a one-off basis just because she could, and from there it grew into her owning a full-fledged hostel. Entrepreneurship at it's finest.

Ok, ok, it's photogenic, but don't let it fool you

I checked into my room. There is, of course, construction going on right outside of my door, but at least I had my own room. It's not nice, but it's my own space. I decided to walk down to the beach and check out the scene. One of the reasons I picked this place is because it was only a 10-minute walk to the beach.

I've heard a lot about Goa from Indians all over India talking about how awesome Goa is. Oddly enough, I had heard the same thing from Bangladeshis about Cox's Bazar in Bangladesh. As it turns out, much like how the best beach in Bangladesh is still... in Bangladesh, the best beach in India is still... in India. I got down to the beach and it was basically empty. It turns out Anjuna beach isn't a sandy beach, it's a rocky one. Not what I had in mind. Against my better judgement, I climbed up a big, slippery rock, but it turned out fine. Then I walked around for a bit, bought myself some ice cream (obviously), and headed back to my hostel for a nap.

You're looking at the big rock I climbed.
"Big" being a relative term.

I was having flashbacks to the miserableness of Calcutta. I really didn't feel well but as my wise friend and former colleague KW once told me, "you have to feed your army" or you won't get better, so I decided to go in search of food. I left the hostel a little before sunset, headed toward the Dominos Pizza I saw on the way here. I couldn't remember exactly how far it was, but it was packed with foreigners when I passed it earlier, so I figured that would be a good place to meet some people. You can ALWAYS count of foreigners to gravitate back to the comforts of the western world.

It turns out, Dominos was farther than I thought and it took me about 30 minutes to get there. As I was walking, I realized I was going down a skinny, dirt road and the sun was quickly setting. Which meant that on the way back, I was probably going to get hit by some sort of speeding vehicle and/or animal. I was going to die... for some Dominos Pizza. Worth it? At this point, I clearly wasn't thinking straight anymore.

I got to Dominos and it was completely devoid of any other patrons. Of course. I refused to travel all the way to India and eat a meal alone at a Dominos Pizza, so I told myself I was just going to get a snack and find real food later. I ordered some cheesy breadsticks and 15 minutes later I was out the door.

It was basically pitch black on my way back. I ran into a white dude and said hi, and he said hi back in an American accent. What? So I asked him if he was, by chance, American, and he said yes! The very first American I've met on my entire trip! We chatted for a bit, he was coming back from being in the Peace Corps for a couple years in Africa and now was just taking some time to travel. He had met some rando the night before who invited him out for some authentic Goan food, so he invited me to tag along, which obviously I did.

A few minutes later, this dude, KR, shows up on his motorcycle and takes us both to this restaurant about a five-minute drive away. This guy was a character: he's done a lot of traveling in his life and visits Goa pretty often. I'm pretty sure he's some sort of Indian, but hard to say.

We get to the restaurant and there's a menagerie of stray animals, including but not limited to a pack of dogs, several cats, and a pair of ducks. DUCKS.

Goan food is pretty solid if you're into fish. We had a great meal, some great conversation, and KR even picked up the tab for us two strangers. What a nice guy! Afterward he dropped us off and I headed back to the hostel, glad that I hadn't just spent the entire day alone in my room.

Go on to Goa Part 3: Calangute Beach and Yes, It's Still Fully Clothed