Serenade!

~
Darlings, Infosys Grrl and I have just been serenaded to within an inch of our collective lives! We in a hotel room that overlooks the Arabian Sea but between us and the sea is a men's hostel or dorm or something of the sort. Infosys Grrl was leaning out of our window to take a picture of the sun going down over the sea and attracted the attention of some of the denizens of this hostel or whatever it is. A cry of "Eveda, eveda, photo" went up (over there, over there) and the next thing we know was that half a dozen young men were leering up at us. We ignored them and went out for dinner but didn't realize that our room was being carefully marked. We've just returned and the minute we came and turned the lights on, a chorus started up outside! Honest, I could not make this up: they sang a poppy Bollywood song, the gist of which was to beg us to look over there! Needless to say, we pinched all the curtains shut even tighter and ignored them. They've stopped now but there's no way we're ever going to be opening those curtains again -- so perhaps it's a good thing we're leaving Cochin tomorrow morning for Calicut.

Serenade apart, we've had a lovely time today. We decided that we must do a backwater tour (after all, we are tourists in Kerala, or at least I am) and it's as beautiful as anything the tourist brochures show. We went on a 3 hr trip on a converted houseboat and it was lovely! I have a ton of pictures of coconut trees reflected in the waters of Vembanad Lake; I'll put up a couple of them when I figure out how! We were kept amused by the antics of some of the other people on board: there was a group of six older folk from North India who pumped us for information about what there was to see in Mysore when they figured out where we were from and then looked horrified when we suggested that they schedule a trip to a museum among the other sights; and there was a young Danish couple with two little kids, the younger of whom lay on the bottom of the houseboat and tortured the little black ants crawling around there for a good part of the trip. The trip ended with a "Keralite" meal -- avial, poreal, red rice, etc. And I have to report to y'all that I felt chuffed by the fact that the little Danish kids and I did a better job of eating all of this stuff than did Infosys Grrl -- and she's a Keralite, born and bred! Hee.

I will admit though that my delicate stomach made its presence felt in the 45 min drive back to our hotel in a jumpy jeeplike vehicle. We raced along at a crazy pace, and scraped past a whole slew of other vehicles that were coming at us at equally breakneck speeds, along potholed roads. I moaned in terror, Infosys Grrl grinned unfeelingly and the driver smirked. It was a fun ride and I swear that my poor stomach only caught up with me about half an hour after we'd reached our hotel. I spent the time in between lying on the bed, directly under the fan, recovering. Then a nap, followed by the incident of Infosys Grrl giving the wimmin-starved boys next door ideas and an evening spent by the water -- Cochin is made up of various islands and spits of land broken up by water bodies and I dragged poor Infosys Grrl on to a little local ferry. And she repaid me by claiming that it was her turn to be sick -- on a ferry ride that lasted all of 4 and a 1/2 minutes. Honestly, I ask you! But we got there safely, and wandered along looking at Chinese fishing nets scenically spread out against the orange sky of the night. This was all in the old part of town -- Fort Cochin, where we also had dinner, right by the moving waters, under a full full moon, looking across at the city on the other side -- it's the first time on this trip that I've felt as though I could do this forever. It's as though I've finally reached equilibrium. I just wish I could bottle it up and take it with me when I return.

G'night!