So it is with mixed emotions that I say goodbye to Sivananda. I'm ready for a change of scenery, and I miss the physical process of travelling and the sense of freedom it brings. And i need a bit of respite from the karma police.
But i will miss the intense yoga, the social aspect and of course, the delightful long-haired yoga teacher. (In my head we are married with hundreds of Jewish babies, living on a yoga farm in Rishikesh, making yogurt and walking about barefoot ...in reality when he asked me my name last week I may as well have sneezed in his face...)
Alas, onwards to Varkala!
Varkala is a beachside town about 40 minutes from Trivandrum. Obviously, it's a real treat to get some beach time in, particularly after such a busy ashram scedule, but Varkala is bursting at the seams with tourists - and the cost of living there certainly reflects this. Luckily I am ith 2 friends from the ashram, so we spread the cost of accommodation and are fortunate to pay only Rs300 each for a decent little room just a stones throw away from the North Cliff which leads to the beach. I'm not going to dwell too much on Varkala - life at the beach soon becomes groundhog day. Yoga, eat, chai, read, walk, write, shop....and so on. There are countless yoga classes on offer here, for every style and every budget. Aside from my own practice (which I am managing to9 maintain!), I try one class at Bohemian Masala with a very bendy teacher called Vasudev. It's based on Sivananda, in a lovely garden location and costs Rs300 for approx 2 hours. Shop around and get recommendations to make sure you're getting a decent teacher. Kerala is also the home of Ayurveda, and Varkala is a veritable paradise for health and wellbeing tourists. Every other shop is a treatment centre, offering everything from 1 hour massages to 2 week Panchakarma detox programmes. On the advice of an ashram friend, I decide to opt for ShiroDhara treatment; where warmed medicated oil is dripped slowly on the forehead for 45 minutes. It's an intersting experience to say the least. WIth benefits alleged to include the alleviation of insomnia and skin diseases, shirodhara is also purported to open the third eye. And although I'm pretty sure that my 3rd eye is still a bit blind, I feel relaxed happy afterwards. Though it does take about 3 days to fully wash the sticky oil out of my hair...
After 5 nights of beach-bumming, paying over the odds for daal and buying things that i don't actually need, I move on (albeit briefy) to Cochin. Cochin, in my view, is a rather dull and unexciting Indian city. It's clean, relatively wealthy and has little in the way of enticing attractions. Perhaps I am being a little unfair, but if you are going to hang around an Indian city then you may as well go all out. Give me the chaos of Mumbai, the eerie atmosphere of Varanasi or the unrelenting craziness of Kolkata any day....
And therein lies my sole purpose for being in Cochin. I am taking a flight (a bit more "flashpacker" than "backpacker", but internal flights in India are pretty cheap and save days of smelly train travel), to one of India's most chaotic and exciting cities, Kolkata. I fell totally i love with Calcutta 2 years ago, and am eagerly anticipating my return. After a brief stop in Chennai, I arrive to Calcutta around midday, with my newly acquired South Korean pal in tow.
A 2 hour bus ride later and I'm back in the pulsing, heady throng that is Sudder Street, the backpacker district of town. Hotels and guest houses here are no great shakes (think bare cubicle-style rooms with rock hard beds), and prices are pretty steep, but after a quick scout about we manage to find a decent place for only Rs300. As standard, bathrooms are shared and hot water is only available by the bucket, but for 3 quid a night, I'm not complaining!
Calcutta is a city which almost defies explanation. It's real, raw, unapologetic India. First impressions can be daunting; it looks like a colossal refugee camp. There are people upon people upon people. Streets are crammed and bursting at the seams with people, cars, trams, rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws, stray dogs, market stalls, more people...
Ancient, crumbling mansions reminiscent of Victorian, Dickensian London give way to post-apocalyptic dystopian shanty towns. It's a frantic, hyperactive, stressful city; it's India on speed, on crack, on hallucinogens.
Calcutta is a steaming, foetid cesspool. Fruit stands, chai wallahs, makeshift food stalls, market stalls selling absolutely everything and anything. If Calcutta doesn't sell it, you don't need it!
People sleeping (or passed out) in every available bit of space; dirty children playing among the rubble-strewn streets; full-feathered crows stalking the flea-ridden stray dogs that are in abundance here; serious men sitting cross-legged on heavy blankets, methodically hand-cutting gnarly stalks of tobacco ready for chewing; men shining the snazzy shoes of the fabulously moustached Calcutters; typists lining the shady streets, waiting patiently to type out anything required on heavy, old-fashioned typewriters; locals hawking up fat slevery globs of red paan, spitting in arrogantly on the pavements; young boys expertly rolling out chapati after chapati, paratha after paratha; rivers of stinking animals blood running down the streets leading from the markets; tiny baskets crammed full of featherless chickens just waiting to be grabbed by the foot, weighed and taken to the nearest restaurant to be slaughtered; dead cats flung to the side of the street,crawling with parasites; dirty ice melting over the freshly severed fish heads; tens of thousands of bangles and bracelets glinting in the hazy sunshine; Muslims stopping work on hearing the hypnotic call to prayer from the Mosques; vats of bubbling and boiling fat serving up jalebis and gulab jamun; homeless women thrusting skinny babies in the faces of tourists, begging "Please Sister, help me..."; half-dead men collapsed on the pavement, oblivious to life around them; shattered clay chai-cups littering the streets; desperate prostitutes; beedie rollers, making thousands of hand-rolled cigarettes per day; amputees dragging their smooth stumps through the streets on skateboards, or using flip-flops to preserve their calloused hands; junkies huddled with blankets in the New Market, injecting with dirty needles......
Calcutta is a city of extremes, so alongisde the extreme poverty, there also exists a very rich and affluent side. There are designer shops, rich businessmen, flash cars, well-heeled students, McDonalds... The poverty is Calcutta is so much more apparent than that of any other Indian city, simply because of the huge, gaping dichotomy that exists between rich and poor. The rich are RICH, and the poor are totally DESTITUTE.
Nonetheless, it is a brilliant city to lose yourself in. the streets are wide, and are brilliantly named. Dalhousie Square. Chowringhee Street. Dum Dum. Hooghly. Ballygunge. Tollygunge. Every corner is like an open-air museum, and transport is modern and effienct - particulary the Metro, which is only Rs5 per journey. I have seen much of the main sights in Calcutta already, so am under no pressure to do the "tourist" thing. But one place I'm really keen to visit is the Kali Temple. I've heard incredible things about this place, where pilgrims come to worship this destructive goddess. A 40 minute walk from Sudder Street, Kali Temple is a bustling mass of people. Inside the temple, it's nearly impossible to move. Hundreds of worshippers push and jostle, eager to catch a glimpse of the fiery-eyed effigy, wailing and throwing flowers. It's prime territory for pick-pockets and dodgy dealers, so be careful!
I don't hang around the Kali Temple too long - only long enough to catch a glimpse of the dead body of an old woman arriving. It's too intense here, and I need to break free from the fake priests offering all-sorts. A quick and easy ride on the Metro later and I am back in the centre of town, wandering around the labyrinthine market place.
Food here is ridiculously cheap; masala dosa for Rs20, lassis for Rs25, parottas for Rs6. This is the real price of food; this is how it should be.
I buy The Times of India for Rs3 and spend the rest of the day reading and drinking chai with the market sellers (who I am now on first-name terms with...). This city never sleeps, and so i head to bed early-ish. I'm pretty much guaranteed to be awake from 5am onwards, woken by the noise of Indians hawking up their phlegm (as they do, every morning without fail!) Though I am becoming increasingly immune to the unrelenting noise of India, and can almost sleep through anything, without the aid of sleeping pills. The ability of Indian people to do this is nothing short of amazing.
But after only a couple of days here, I am ready to move on, the solitude and peace of the mountainous northern state of Sikkim. No matter how much i wash, Calcutta seems to leave a film of dirt on my skin. And it is under my skin. I have real Indian, calloused feet now, ingrained with dirt. I need some fresh mountain air!
But I'm sure that I'll be back here soon, because I love every rotten smell that oozes from Calcutta's sewers. What a truly incredible, humbling city.
VARKALA: Stayed at Green Dhara Homestay on the North Cliff. A room for 3 costs Rs1200. (I had a mattress on the floor). I also stayed one night at the very luxurious Ksethra, just next door to Green Dhara. Rooms are meant to cost Rs1500, but a bit of negotioation and good chat gets me a very healthy discounted rate (I promised I wouldn't tell...but Rs 600 for best room I have ever stayed in, with the most comfortable bed too!) Eating is expensive, and service slow, but a few decent places include Sky Lounge (very good service) and the Sunrise German Bakery, both on the North Cliff.
Train from Trivandrum (near the ashram) is Rs30 and takes about 45 minutes. A rickshaw from the train station to the helipad at the start of the cliffs will cost Rs80.
COCHIN - I stayed on the Ernakulum side, near the boat jetty on Cannonshed Road. There are plenty of accommodations available there. I stayed at Maple Regency. A double room costs Rs485 upwards. Rooms have TV and attached bathrooms. Plenty of cheapish restaurants here too. A prepaid rickshaw from the train station to Cannonshed Road will set you back Rs22. The airport is quite a trek out of town, and there is an AC bus that uns direct from Fort Cochin to the airport. My flight was too early in the morning to co-ordinate with the bus, so I have to take a rickshaw. Cost Rs400.
Flight from Cochin to Calcutta cost Rs 7000.
CALCUTTA -
Where to Stay: Sudder Street, where else?! The main tourist street (although not actually that touristy) is in the thick of the action. Guest houses are a bit rough around the edges, so definitely check out the rooms first. Bed bugs are common! I stayed at Continental Hotel. Room was decent enough. Cost Rs300 per night.
Getting around: Metro! Easiest and quickets way by far, and costs Rs5 per journey. For other journeys, bus is cheap, but traffic is a nightmare, so be preapred to wait a lot! Cycle rickshaws and hand-drawn rickshaws are also available, but seem a bit cruel. (a skinny indian man pulls you around the city in a 2 wheeled carriage...)
Eating: Not the healthiest, but the parottas are DELICIOUS. Street food is INCREDIBLE here, and avaialbe on every corner, for pennies. Egg-rolls are typical here too. It's possible to eat for about 1 pound per day. Juices, smoothies and lassi's also radily available. Hogg Market is a brilliant place to pick up fruits, nuts, snacks, teas, spices...haggle hard.
See: Obviously Calcutta has some great attractions - Victoria Memorial, Indian Museum, Asiatic Society, Mother Teresa's House, Park Street Cemetery, Kali Temple...but just walking arund is great too, and a fantastic way to experience the city. Some of the best sights are off the beaten track.
But i will miss the intense yoga, the social aspect and of course, the delightful long-haired yoga teacher. (In my head we are married with hundreds of Jewish babies, living on a yoga farm in Rishikesh, making yogurt and walking about barefoot ...in reality when he asked me my name last week I may as well have sneezed in his face...)
Alas, onwards to Varkala!
Varkala is a beachside town about 40 minutes from Trivandrum. Obviously, it's a real treat to get some beach time in, particularly after such a busy ashram scedule, but Varkala is bursting at the seams with tourists - and the cost of living there certainly reflects this. Luckily I am ith 2 friends from the ashram, so we spread the cost of accommodation and are fortunate to pay only Rs300 each for a decent little room just a stones throw away from the North Cliff which leads to the beach. I'm not going to dwell too much on Varkala - life at the beach soon becomes groundhog day. Yoga, eat, chai, read, walk, write, shop....and so on. There are countless yoga classes on offer here, for every style and every budget. Aside from my own practice (which I am managing to9 maintain!), I try one class at Bohemian Masala with a very bendy teacher called Vasudev. It's based on Sivananda, in a lovely garden location and costs Rs300 for approx 2 hours. Shop around and get recommendations to make sure you're getting a decent teacher. Kerala is also the home of Ayurveda, and Varkala is a veritable paradise for health and wellbeing tourists. Every other shop is a treatment centre, offering everything from 1 hour massages to 2 week Panchakarma detox programmes. On the advice of an ashram friend, I decide to opt for ShiroDhara treatment; where warmed medicated oil is dripped slowly on the forehead for 45 minutes. It's an intersting experience to say the least. WIth benefits alleged to include the alleviation of insomnia and skin diseases, shirodhara is also purported to open the third eye. And although I'm pretty sure that my 3rd eye is still a bit blind, I feel relaxed happy afterwards. Though it does take about 3 days to fully wash the sticky oil out of my hair...
After 5 nights of beach-bumming, paying over the odds for daal and buying things that i don't actually need, I move on (albeit briefy) to Cochin. Cochin, in my view, is a rather dull and unexciting Indian city. It's clean, relatively wealthy and has little in the way of enticing attractions. Perhaps I am being a little unfair, but if you are going to hang around an Indian city then you may as well go all out. Give me the chaos of Mumbai, the eerie atmosphere of Varanasi or the unrelenting craziness of Kolkata any day....
And therein lies my sole purpose for being in Cochin. I am taking a flight (a bit more "flashpacker" than "backpacker", but internal flights in India are pretty cheap and save days of smelly train travel), to one of India's most chaotic and exciting cities, Kolkata. I fell totally i love with Calcutta 2 years ago, and am eagerly anticipating my return. After a brief stop in Chennai, I arrive to Calcutta around midday, with my newly acquired South Korean pal in tow.
A 2 hour bus ride later and I'm back in the pulsing, heady throng that is Sudder Street, the backpacker district of town. Hotels and guest houses here are no great shakes (think bare cubicle-style rooms with rock hard beds), and prices are pretty steep, but after a quick scout about we manage to find a decent place for only Rs300. As standard, bathrooms are shared and hot water is only available by the bucket, but for 3 quid a night, I'm not complaining!
Calcutta is a city which almost defies explanation. It's real, raw, unapologetic India. First impressions can be daunting; it looks like a colossal refugee camp. There are people upon people upon people. Streets are crammed and bursting at the seams with people, cars, trams, rickshaws, cycle-rickshaws, stray dogs, market stalls, more people...
Ancient, crumbling mansions reminiscent of Victorian, Dickensian London give way to post-apocalyptic dystopian shanty towns. It's a frantic, hyperactive, stressful city; it's India on speed, on crack, on hallucinogens.
Calcutta is a steaming, foetid cesspool. Fruit stands, chai wallahs, makeshift food stalls, market stalls selling absolutely everything and anything. If Calcutta doesn't sell it, you don't need it!
People sleeping (or passed out) in every available bit of space; dirty children playing among the rubble-strewn streets; full-feathered crows stalking the flea-ridden stray dogs that are in abundance here; serious men sitting cross-legged on heavy blankets, methodically hand-cutting gnarly stalks of tobacco ready for chewing; men shining the snazzy shoes of the fabulously moustached Calcutters; typists lining the shady streets, waiting patiently to type out anything required on heavy, old-fashioned typewriters; locals hawking up fat slevery globs of red paan, spitting in arrogantly on the pavements; young boys expertly rolling out chapati after chapati, paratha after paratha; rivers of stinking animals blood running down the streets leading from the markets; tiny baskets crammed full of featherless chickens just waiting to be grabbed by the foot, weighed and taken to the nearest restaurant to be slaughtered; dead cats flung to the side of the street,crawling with parasites; dirty ice melting over the freshly severed fish heads; tens of thousands of bangles and bracelets glinting in the hazy sunshine; Muslims stopping work on hearing the hypnotic call to prayer from the Mosques; vats of bubbling and boiling fat serving up jalebis and gulab jamun; homeless women thrusting skinny babies in the faces of tourists, begging "Please Sister, help me..."; half-dead men collapsed on the pavement, oblivious to life around them; shattered clay chai-cups littering the streets; desperate prostitutes; beedie rollers, making thousands of hand-rolled cigarettes per day; amputees dragging their smooth stumps through the streets on skateboards, or using flip-flops to preserve their calloused hands; junkies huddled with blankets in the New Market, injecting with dirty needles......
Calcutta is a city of extremes, so alongisde the extreme poverty, there also exists a very rich and affluent side. There are designer shops, rich businessmen, flash cars, well-heeled students, McDonalds... The poverty is Calcutta is so much more apparent than that of any other Indian city, simply because of the huge, gaping dichotomy that exists between rich and poor. The rich are RICH, and the poor are totally DESTITUTE.
Nonetheless, it is a brilliant city to lose yourself in. the streets are wide, and are brilliantly named. Dalhousie Square. Chowringhee Street. Dum Dum. Hooghly. Ballygunge. Tollygunge. Every corner is like an open-air museum, and transport is modern and effienct - particulary the Metro, which is only Rs5 per journey. I have seen much of the main sights in Calcutta already, so am under no pressure to do the "tourist" thing. But one place I'm really keen to visit is the Kali Temple. I've heard incredible things about this place, where pilgrims come to worship this destructive goddess. A 40 minute walk from Sudder Street, Kali Temple is a bustling mass of people. Inside the temple, it's nearly impossible to move. Hundreds of worshippers push and jostle, eager to catch a glimpse of the fiery-eyed effigy, wailing and throwing flowers. It's prime territory for pick-pockets and dodgy dealers, so be careful!
I don't hang around the Kali Temple too long - only long enough to catch a glimpse of the dead body of an old woman arriving. It's too intense here, and I need to break free from the fake priests offering all-sorts. A quick and easy ride on the Metro later and I am back in the centre of town, wandering around the labyrinthine market place.
Food here is ridiculously cheap; masala dosa for Rs20, lassis for Rs25, parottas for Rs6. This is the real price of food; this is how it should be.
I buy The Times of India for Rs3 and spend the rest of the day reading and drinking chai with the market sellers (who I am now on first-name terms with...). This city never sleeps, and so i head to bed early-ish. I'm pretty much guaranteed to be awake from 5am onwards, woken by the noise of Indians hawking up their phlegm (as they do, every morning without fail!) Though I am becoming increasingly immune to the unrelenting noise of India, and can almost sleep through anything, without the aid of sleeping pills. The ability of Indian people to do this is nothing short of amazing.
But after only a couple of days here, I am ready to move on, the solitude and peace of the mountainous northern state of Sikkim. No matter how much i wash, Calcutta seems to leave a film of dirt on my skin. And it is under my skin. I have real Indian, calloused feet now, ingrained with dirt. I need some fresh mountain air!
But I'm sure that I'll be back here soon, because I love every rotten smell that oozes from Calcutta's sewers. What a truly incredible, humbling city.
VARKALA: Stayed at Green Dhara Homestay on the North Cliff. A room for 3 costs Rs1200. (I had a mattress on the floor). I also stayed one night at the very luxurious Ksethra, just next door to Green Dhara. Rooms are meant to cost Rs1500, but a bit of negotioation and good chat gets me a very healthy discounted rate (I promised I wouldn't tell...but Rs 600 for best room I have ever stayed in, with the most comfortable bed too!) Eating is expensive, and service slow, but a few decent places include Sky Lounge (very good service) and the Sunrise German Bakery, both on the North Cliff.
Train from Trivandrum (near the ashram) is Rs30 and takes about 45 minutes. A rickshaw from the train station to the helipad at the start of the cliffs will cost Rs80.
COCHIN - I stayed on the Ernakulum side, near the boat jetty on Cannonshed Road. There are plenty of accommodations available there. I stayed at Maple Regency. A double room costs Rs485 upwards. Rooms have TV and attached bathrooms. Plenty of cheapish restaurants here too. A prepaid rickshaw from the train station to Cannonshed Road will set you back Rs22. The airport is quite a trek out of town, and there is an AC bus that uns direct from Fort Cochin to the airport. My flight was too early in the morning to co-ordinate with the bus, so I have to take a rickshaw. Cost Rs400.
Flight from Cochin to Calcutta cost Rs 7000.
CALCUTTA -
Where to Stay: Sudder Street, where else?! The main tourist street (although not actually that touristy) is in the thick of the action. Guest houses are a bit rough around the edges, so definitely check out the rooms first. Bed bugs are common! I stayed at Continental Hotel. Room was decent enough. Cost Rs300 per night.
Getting around: Metro! Easiest and quickets way by far, and costs Rs5 per journey. For other journeys, bus is cheap, but traffic is a nightmare, so be preapred to wait a lot! Cycle rickshaws and hand-drawn rickshaws are also available, but seem a bit cruel. (a skinny indian man pulls you around the city in a 2 wheeled carriage...)
Eating: Not the healthiest, but the parottas are DELICIOUS. Street food is INCREDIBLE here, and avaialbe on every corner, for pennies. Egg-rolls are typical here too. It's possible to eat for about 1 pound per day. Juices, smoothies and lassi's also radily available. Hogg Market is a brilliant place to pick up fruits, nuts, snacks, teas, spices...haggle hard.
See: Obviously Calcutta has some great attractions - Victoria Memorial, Indian Museum, Asiatic Society, Mother Teresa's House, Park Street Cemetery, Kali Temple...but just walking arund is great too, and a fantastic way to experience the city. Some of the best sights are off the beaten track.
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