Remba the ELEPHANT!

Kerala breakfast of champions

Elephant day has arrived! I woke up late this morning and rushed out of the room. I was going to skip breakfast, but apparently they had already made it for me, so I ate it. Glad I did, I would have been starving otherwise. Breakfast was some sort of curry-like thing with a spongy bread thing and a ricey thing. It was no chocolate croissant, but it was fine. The staff handed me a piece of paper with my itinerary sketched out. So organized. After breakfast, my driver was already there with a Jeep, ready to go! No seatbelt and no door on my side. Of course. It's fine, I'm used to it by now. Our first stop for the day was Elephant Junction. !!!

I would be remiss if I didn't talk about the ethics of elephant riding. I've heard both sides of this argument so let me lay out my point of view. In one of my biology classes, I learned the term "charismatic megafauna", which basically means really big animals that are beloved by people, e.g. tigers, lions, giraffes, etc. (the context of this lesson was that these animals end up getting a disproportionate amount of attention and money when it comes to conservation, particularly of endangered species because they're cute and cuddly and you can anthropomorphize them a lot easier than you can, say, an insect). Elephants would certainly fall under this category. I'm in no way making an argument for not helping to get elephants off of the Endangered Species list (quite the contrary, as I'll explain in a second). I do think there is a tendency to romanticize elephants and think of them as somehow more special than other animals. In so much as they are endangered, I agree. But to some extent, I also feel like riding an elephant is the Asian equivalent of riding a horse at the county fair. Obviously, there are some additional factors to consider with elephants that we would just take as a given for that county fair horse. I wouldn't want to ride an elephant that was stolen away from it's natural habitat. I wouldn't want to ride an elephant that's been mistreated. I wouldn't want to ride an elephant that's kept under poor living conditions. But I would want to support an organization that helps protect these animals from poachers, that takes good care of them, that feeds them, and gives them space to roam. I couldn't say with 100% certainty that the organization I picked would offer those things, but from as much as I could tell from the internet, the elephants at this place are well taken-care of. Yes, it does seem like a business and they're making money off of these animals. But I don't see anything inherently wrong with that if these animals are treated well and living a good life while also allowing these people to survive. End ethical aside.

Did I mention Thekkady is basically a jungle?

So many elephants!

We pulled up to the place and there were elephants like 50 feet away! There they were! Elephant Junction has a total of seven elephants, six females and one male. They seem pretty happy. They've got a lot of space. They look well-fed and generally of a good temperament. They get bathed many times a day. And as far as I could tell, they've got a great relationship with all of the people taking care of them.

I was ushered over to a raised gazebo area where I put my stuff down. I was leery of leaving my bag out but the guy was like "don't worry, I'll move it to the office." [Spoiler alert: he never moved it to the office! But it was fine, it was there when I got back.]

¡El elephante es gris y grande! - Animaniacs

A couple minutes later they brought an elephant over! It was HUGE! I mean... like, elephant huge. It was wearing a saddle-looking thing and they instructed me to climb on. So I did. Verrrrry carefully. Whoakay, I'm on an elephant. I'm ON an elephant. This is awesome.

My elephant's name is Remba and she's 32 years old. They told me she'll live to be 100 but the internet suggests otherwise, probably closer to 65. Remba is incredibly gentle. She had a handler with her who led us up a trail. He had a pretty loud, stern-sounding voice, but from the way they interacted with each other, they actually seemed to have a pretty good relationship. As far as I could tell, neither of them spoke a lick of English.

The view from Remba

It was pretty crazy riding an elephant. More comfortable than you would think. There were metal handles attached to her saddle that I could hold onto. Remba's skin is basically what you'd expect it to feel like. Kind of rubbery and leathery. Pretty rough. A little hairy. Occasionally ants would crawl on her, but I don't think she noticed. She did look a little old. Parts of her (face, ears, and few other spots) looked a little discolored, but maybe that's just what elephants look like. She also had a hole through her left ear. I didn't know what it was for, but I learned later that it's a thing they do to the elephants so they can use the hole to pull on their ears while they are training them. Sort of the elephant-equivalent of a choke collar but a little more... gruesome.

Welcome to the jungle

Remba and I went on a roughly 20-minute trek through the forest. It was beautiful. I was sitting up high on Remba so I had a good view. Occasionally I'd have to push the tree branches out of the way or they would have knocked me off of Remba.

I'm on a boat! Err... elephant!

Remba was pretty quiet throughout the ride. On occasion she's let out a "phphphrrerrerrrrrr" or whatever sound elephants make. I kind of felt like talking to Remba but I felt super awkward talking to an elephant, especially with the handler there, so I didn't say much.

We came back to the gazebo area and I dismounted onto the platform. I was surprisingly not sore from the ride. There were these two other guys on the platform who also seemed like visitors to the place, but I'm not sure what they were doing up there. One of the guys was like "You know that pain you feel in your crotch? We call that... pain in the crotch." Worst. Joke. Ever.

Please don't eat me. Please don't eat me. Please don't eat me.

I had a cup of tea post-ride in a little outdoor cafe right next to the gazebo while they got the next activity ready for me. A few minutes later they called me back out and there was a bowl full of huge cut-up cucumbers, which meant... feeding time! I fed Remba the chunks of cucumber one-by-one. I'd hold up a piece of cucumber to her mouth and she would stick out her tongue and take it right out of my hand! Her tongue was enormous and super slimy, as you would expect. THIS IS SO COOL. Remba has like... six of those huge cucumbers, which was probably just a little snack for her.

Splish splash, look who's taking a bath

The next activity was bath time! I was told that I was probably going to get wet so hopefully I had brought a change of clothes. ...I hadn't. However, I am backpacking through Asia, so I'm already pretty prepared for this situation: Shoes, socks, and shirt came off, the legs of my pants zipped off, and the rest of what I had on was quick-drying. Bring on the elephant!

This was the one guy who
spoke decent English so
he shepherded me around

They brought me over to a 1-ft.-deep pool where Remba was already lying down, ready for her bath. They handed me a brush and told me to go for it. I had no idea what I was doing, so I started scrubbing her shoulder area. Apparently I wasn't doing it right, so someone came to show me how. You're supposed to do it hard. Like, really hard. Like you're waxing a car hard. Gotta put some elbow grease into it. I asked if it hurts them and they said no, it's actually like a massage for them. I was skeptical at first, but Remba seemed to be enjoying herself. And who wouldn't love to get a bath from this guy, amirite?


After about five minutes, it was time for us to switch! So Remba sat up and I climbed up her from the back. No saddle this time. There was a separate pool of freshwater in front of her so she filled up her trunk, lifted it back over her head and gave doused me like I was on fire. THIS IS SO COOL. There's nothing quite like it. The water was freezing, but what an experience. We did that for a couple of minutes until I was sufficiently clean/unclean. I got down, toweled off, and got dressed.

You be good now, Remba!

All good things must come to an end, and this was unfortunately the last of the Adventures of Remba and [R]. I said thank you and goodbye to Remba, found my driver, and we were off to the next activity.

We drove up a huge hillside to a huge hillside until we got to the top. We parked on the side of a dirt road because if we went any further the Jeep would have gotten stuck. We walked a couple more minutes through pretty deep mud until we made it to a clearing and an absolutely incredible view of the valley surrounding us. This place is called Ottakathalamedu and it's a common tourist place around here for good reason. My driver has no idea how to hold a camera straight, so unfortunately a lot of my pictures came out totally crooked.

And the valley was thiiiiiiiis big

Am I a real explorer now?

Our next stop was Chellarkovil, a waterfall! It turns out that the best vantage point is in some rando's backyard, so we parked in the street, and walked through someone's property. Apparently, if they're home when you come by, then you give them some money (on the order of $US0.35).

If I could dangle over the edge, you'd see an over 1km waterfall drop

Next on the agenda was the lunch. We went into town. The restaurant I ate at was packed, but nothing too special. I had biriani, a traditional chicken and rice dish. Food was spicier than I would have liked, but what food in India isn't?

Up next was a tour of a tea plantation! There are a few big ones around here, but only one of them gives tours, the Connemara Tea Factory. Unfortunately, because it had been raining the few days prior, leaves hadn't been picked, so the factory wasn't running. I decided to still do the tour though. I walked up this paved street with fields of tea trees on both sides. Someone came up to me and asked me if I was there for the tour. I said yes, and he told me that I was a little late, but he presentation had just started, so I followed him to a building up the road. Inside, a Indian dude speaking with pretty much no Indian accent was giving slide projector presentation to an international crowd of about 10 people. He was a really friendly dude, and explained the lifecycle of how tea is made, from planting all the way through drinking.

Our tour guide at the Connemara Tea Factory

After the presentation, we walked down to the factory. None of the machines were running, but it was actually pretty much the same thing. We saw the area where they dry the leaves, and the machines they use to press, sort, and package the leaves. During the tour I met these two awesome German girls who were also taking some time to travel. After the factory tour, we went outside for a tasting and a lesson on the proper way to make tea:

Step 1: Put one teaspoon (about 2.5 grams) of tea into a cup
Step 2: Pour boiling water on top of the tea (8 ounces)
Step 3: Cover the tea and let it steep for 5 minutes. Do NOT stir. Stirring will make the tea bitter.
Step 4: Uncover and strain tea into a new cup
Step 5: Drink!

My spice walk tour guide

I walked back down the road to find my driver, said goodbye to my new German friends, and we were off to our next destination, a spice farm. This is apparently a pretty popular thing in this part of India because I saw a handful of places where you could do this during the drive. The spice walk was really cool - basically a guy showed me around this huge garden and pointed out a zillion different spices that were growing there.



There were also lemons the size of your head, cacao, a bunch of other fruits, and this crazy plant called a touch-me-not that closes up with you touch it!

But what I was most excited about was star fruit! Star fruit is this amazing fruit that I only know in the context of Guyana. I didn't even know it grew out here. But when I got really excited about it, the guy who was showing me around climbed up the tree and picked one for me and it was huge and juicy and one of the best starfruits I've ever had.

So-named because when
you slice it, it's
shaped like a star!

After the spice walk, we took a trip to our last destination, a vineyard in the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. It was a beautiful drive over. On the way, we saw trucks filled with women driving back to Tamil Nadu. My driver told me that these were day laborers who came to work in Kerala.

Omnomnom

We arrived at the vineyard after about a 20-minute drive. We didn't spend too much time there. I mean, there are grapes, and that's about it. On the way out, I bought some grape juice. It was one of the most amazing drinks I've ever had. So sweet, I didn't know fresh grape juice could taste like this! Turns out it can't, because when I checked the bottle, it said that this thing was packed with sugar. Like... worse than Coke.

We returned home right around sunset. JA made dinner for me again tonight, this time slightly less spicy, at my request. Dessert was lassi instead of ice cream tonight, since I figured they still didn't have any.

Last but not least, today I decided that my next country is going to be Cambodia. I was choosing between Sri Lanka, Myanmar, and Cambodia. I've been in India for a month now and kind of want to try something totally different. I think Sri Lanka is actually going to overlap with what I've experienced in India a lot. So that got crossed off the list. And for Myanmar, it turns out it's more difficult to get a visa there last minute that I originally thought, so that's out. So Cambodia it is! I know absolutely nothing about Cambodia, so this should be interesting. It's also the first place I'm going to where I won't look like the people, which will be an experience in and of itself.

It was an exhausting, amazing day and everything I wanted it to be.

CONTINUE ON to Thekkady Part 4: Goodbye India!

Kerala: An Anthropologist's Dream

Whatever you do, don't step on it. Also, pray for a windless day.

BP's doppelganger left this morning so it was just the four of us for the first half of the day. We made our way back to Kashi Art Cafe for brunch again. It turns out today in Onam, a holiday celebrated in Kerala and the neighboring state of Tamil Nadu. Onam is a 10-day Hindu festival that has to do with the god Vishnu and some other details I don't fully understand. I can tell you that they make these beautiful floral carpets called an "onapookkalam."

OLD...

After brunch we walked around town for a while. I finally made my way to a church on this trip, the  It was beautiful on the inside, and like... 5,000 years old (historically inaccurately blasphemous? perhaps). Maybe 500 years old.

...REALLY, REALLY OLD.

*Actual motorbike does not
come attached to a car

After the church, as we turned down some random street we saw a huge crowd gathering, and it turns out they were filming a commercial for a motorbike! The dude in the commercial was some famous Bollywood actor I've never heard of and the girl was a runner up in some beauty pageant who is now trying to parlay her good looks and moderate success into an acting career, as one is wont to do when one is that attractive and that moderately successful. People seemed to be really excited about the dude, but to be honest, I felt like the woman was really getting shortchanged in the proportion of attention she was receiving from the crowd. ROR tried to sweet talk one of the crew assistants into telling him where they were getting drinks later in the day, but he got shot down. Womp womp.

These were lined up all along the waterfront

When we want to walk by the waterfront, we saw these HUGE net contraptions they use for fishing. The entire apparatus tilts over to submerge the net, and then they pull it up to catch all the fish.

After our walk, one of the guys and his gf also had to head back home, so it was just ROR and me for the rest of the day. ROR was going to be there another few days, as was I, so it worked out well.

Backwater fish, yum!

Later that day, we went to get Ayurvedic massages. I'd been hearing about these all throughout India. It's supposed to be some ancient massage technique native to Kerala that's just now gaining popularity as an alternative medicine treatment (I'll spare you my rant on alternative medicine), but I figure I'm here, so I might as well try one out. So we walk into the place the Rastafarian-looking dude at the hostel recommended. We're greeted by an old woman who puts a menu of massage options in front of us. We choose the standard 1-hour massage. I've got a show to catch later in the day and there's only one masseur available at the moment [side note: all massages (...legitimate, non-sketchy massages) are same-sex in India] so ROR let's me go first. So I walk into the room. It's hot. There's no ventilation. There's a kind of gross, oily massage table in the middle of a dimly-lit room full of lots of other crap. He hands me what looks like a rolled-up napkin and I'm not really sure why until I unravel it and it vaguely resembles a paper thong because... it is in fact essentially a paper thong. I'm apparently supposed to wear this after I strip off all of my other clothes. So I don the napkin I've been provided and lay down on the table. He then proceeds to douse me in what feels like a gallon of oil. I mean, I am COVERED in a layer oil. The massage itself is painful. Not painful in the "oh man, that was a great massage!" kind of way, but the, "I walked down the wrong alley in Compton and got brutally mugged" kind of way. Afterward, I took a shower and try as I might, I think I only managed to get about 75% of the oil off of me.

Right now my own face is showing a combination
of fear, horror, and morbid curiousity

After my massage, I went to the Cochin Cultural Centre to go see a performance of a traditional art form in Kerala called Kathakali. You may recall that back at the Kingdom of Dreams in Gurgaon a few weeks ago, I took a picture with a woman (turns out it was probably a man) dressed in this ridiculous costume and attached the caption "...WHAT?!". It turns out I have discovered what "WHAT" is. It's Kathakali. I didn't know anything about this show beside that I've seen signs for it everywhere and ROR has seen one of these shows already and recommended I check it out. So I did. I arrived to an empty theater. On the wall are huge pictures of a woman (...turns out it was probably a man) with various facial expressions, each titled with a different emotion that I assume the face is supposed to be emoting. I sat down, and over the course of the next 15 minutes, another six or so people also come in. Then these two guys come out onto the stage. One is a big, fat dude, and the other a tall, fit guy. I came an hour early because you can watch the actors put on their makeup, which as it turned out was (though painstakingly long) pretty interesting to see. After about 40 minutes of them putting on makeup, their two characters emerged, the fat guy painted with a green face and the skinny guy made up to be a woman with a yellow face. They left the stage and about 20 minutes later the show began.

Before

After

This show is apparently geared toward tourists so it wasn't a traditional Kathakali show. Instead, it began with a short lesson on what Kathakali is. Turns out this was an art form that was developed in the 1600s in Kerala and still survives (barely) through today. The all-male actors don't speak, but rather communicate via incredibly hyperbolic facial expressions and movements. For example, to express a romantic interest in another character, an actor would very rapidly raise and lower his eyebrows. The dude dressed as a woman gave an impressive demonstration. If you tried to raise and lower your eyebrows are fast as you could, you wouldn't even come close to what this guy could do. Human facial muscles shouldn't be able to move this fast. He must be an alien. Another way the actors communicate with the audience is with the help of a drummer, who sets the emotional tone via music throughout the performance.

After the introduction, we were told the storyline of what we were about to see. Something to do with a king falling in love with a demon who was pretending not to be a demon but then the king finds out she's a demon so (spoiler alert!) he kills her. And even though they went through the whole story with us at the beginning, I still had NO CLUE what was going on throughout the 30-minute performance. It's kind of like that first time you went to the opera, but were too lazy to look at the program before the show started and then you realized all too late that everything was being sung... in Italian, and at the end of the show everyone else is like, "wow, that was amazing" and you were like, "what just happened?" ...No, just me?

Not really sure why there are a bunch of faces
of creepy old men lording over these performers

After the show, I went back to the hostel, which was conveniently a five-minute walk away. I didn't see ROR around and I was starving, so I left the hostel to go find some food. On my way out, there were these two Asian girls who definitely assumed I worked for the hostel (which is fair, I'm brown and I'm in a hostel in India) and asked me a question to which I said I don't know but then I asked them about their dinner plans and invited them to have dinner with me. We ate at the restaurant next to the hostel. The girls, HA and JI, were both from South Korea and as it turns out didn't actually know each other until they met a few days ago. They were both pretty shy, but we had a great conversation and out of nowhere about 20 minutes later ROR found us in the restaurant, so he joined us for dinner. Afterward we showed the girls around the waterfront area and happened upon a dance performance that I imagine is Onam-related.

A classy dinner, obviously

We went to one last bar (nautical-themed! and super fancy) for the night before heading back to the hostel. HA and I went for another walk for about an hour before rejoining the other two and calling it a night.

CONTINUE ON to Fort Kochi Part 4: Are You My Ancestor?