Monday, December 10, 07 in Kerala

It is 10 am now and I am sitting in a boat viewing backwater scenes, very beautiful and relaxing. There are twenty of us, from different countries, including the maintainers of the boat. We've been on a the boat since 9:10 am.

A mini van picked us up from the hotel and the driving distance to the water area took us about forty minutes. The city was very crowded, noisy and disorganized again! I finally realized and convinced myself that I am not in a normal country: This is one of the most populated countries in the world, so obviously I will see crowd, noise and dirt, so I'd better accept the status quo and stop whining and moaning! After
giving myself a lecture and was busy to teach myself to relax and take it easy. The mini van arrived to the water area, then we took our chairs in the boat.

About 10:45 am, we stopped at a village where they process sea shells and produce coconut and other medicinal plants. We learned that 'Kerala' means the land of coconut, that Kerala produces the largest sea shell powder providing pharmaceutical companies in Northern India with Calcium, and that coconut is largely produced in Kerala, but only sufficient for local consumption.

Sea shells get burnt for 12 hours under temperature of 600 C. The resulting powder is not only used to make Calcium tablets, but used also for white cement.

We then left the village to continue our excursion around the water and landed in a small village where lunch was served at 1 pm. The food was delicious and less rich than in Goa and Bombay.

Following lunch, the mini van took us to a different location to take another water excursion, but with smaller boat passing throw narrower water ways, an area that somewhat reminded me of the marshes in South of Iraq, although with distinct differences! Here, we stopped at another village to watch the process of coiling/rope making and watching coconut picking followed by drinking its juice and tasting its white filling. They gave each of the tourists one coconut. It was tasty and healthy sampling.

The beautiful tour ended at 4 pm. After I headed to the hotel room, rested a little, I went to the Tripunithura Poornathrayeesa Temple. It was a unique experience. There was a major festival on that day. Hundreds of people were standing in line to enter the temple. It took me half an hour to finally get inside of it. It was a huge square-shaped, open-roof temple flavored with incense everywhere, decorated with endless array of candles and filled with thousands of people standing to watch the presence of 15 elephants decorated in glittering and colorful attire. I video taped twenty minutes of footage, but was not sure what was going to happen later, so I decided to leave after half an hour. I asked few people what normally happen following the music and the viewing of the elephants, but no one understood me. So I decided to leave. It took me fifteen minutes to exit the temple.

When I exited, I continued taking video footage as I was walking through an adjacent-long street that was blocked from car traffic for people to display their goodies and products for sale. I enjoyed walking around the various bazaars, but was feeling tired because again I did not sleep enough the night before.

When I reached the street's end, I asked a policeman to help me find a taxi to take me back to the hotel. He was so nice and helpful. He called a guy driving the famous three wheeler (meaning a small car with three wheels) and asked him to give me a ride to the hotel. The policeman inquired about the cost of the ride back to the hotel and translated that to me. When I agreed, he took his car's plate number at the presence of the driver to ensure my safety and I made believe I was giving my number to the police when the cab driver was walking back to his car. He did all of that with slight smile on his face; very impressive. His was not the only positive story about policemen in Kerala; as I had three episodes dealing with nice mannered and helpful police!.

I returned to my hotel room and went directly to bed.