Post Restante
Trip Start
Jul 07, 2008
1
75
239
Trip End
May 27, 2010
Kozhikode, Kerala, India
Friday, January 2, 2009
Shastapuri Lodge, Link Road, Calicut, Kerala, India
Very humid
We managed to get on the train at Mangalore without bumping into the 3 fellas we had the falling out with the evening before, except this time we (well Dave actually) bagged the bikes up. That way we didn't have to go through the whole bureaucratic nightmare of getting them into and out of the luggage van. Luckily there was a large area in the entrance to the sleeper compartment (where we were) so we stashed the bikes there.
Instead of cattle, I mean ordinary, class we travelled 3 tier, non a/c sleeper. The seats were slightly padded and there were 3 levels (the 2nd not used during the day) but as far as I could see it was pretty much the same as the train we had taken from Gokarna to Mangalore except we paid 130rps each instead of 42!
To pack the bikes into the bags is a bit of a pain, for Dave especially, because he is the one that ends up doing all the work. Not least because he knows what needs to be done AND we only have one set of allen keys etc (that's my excuse and I'm sticking to it), also, we become the centre of attention for the whole time the bikes are coming out of or going into the bags, which when you're trying to get on and do a job can be a bit frustrating. Particularly as the majority of Indian men and boys are intensely curious and generally crowd round to ask questions about the bikes. It is however all very good natured and yesterday Dave let one of the guys who had been 'helping' him, have a go on my (not his you notice) bike.
So we arrived in Calicut at rush hour, which was a bit of a shock as we haven't been in a city since Bombay. We made our way to the Alakapuri Guest House, which was highly recommended in our book but it was full and it was the same story for the 3 next to it. We were just leaving one hotel when we met the lovely Neil and Ann, also travelling in India on bikes. We chatted for quite some time and they passed on some useful information as they had been in Kerala for a while. It was great to chat to them and it's possible we may see them on the road.
But we still hadn't sorted out our accommodation for the night. By the time we had wandered around and asked a few people it was 8pm and we ended up going to the Span Hotel. We knew we were either going to end up somewhere incredibly cheap and grotty, or, somewhere (relatively) expensive, it ended up being the latter. We paid 1090 rps for an a/c (which we hate) room and frankly was no better than many of the hotels we have stayed at and paid less than half that amount. I think if you want real luxury in India, like a lot of places, you have to pay a lot of money. The good thing about a lot of Indian hotels is that the rate you pay is for 24 hrs, so if you check in at 8pm you check out at 8pm, which can be useful if you are getting night buses or flights etc.
So we are now in the Shastapuri, which is much more like home, at 415 rps. There is a bar on the ground floor so we have found lots of strange men being incredibly friendly and wanting to shake our hands with great enthusiasm and we've also witnessed a couple of chucking outs, which was interesting. A bit like being in the centre of Bristol on a Friday night. Anyway, we thought we might go to the bar later, just so I can write about it in my blog you understand, a bit of investigative journalism, and while we're there we might just have an alcoholic drink but only if we can see a hand in front of our face!
Calicut is FULL of jewellery shops with some of the entrances designed like those to casinos in Las Vegas, talk about glitzy! There's obviously a lot of money sloshing around, courtesy of the petro dollar, everyone has someone in the Middle East sending home money. The other thing it has a lot of is travel agencies, advertising buses to lots of destinations in Kerala and when we arrived last night the street was full of buses loading up with tourists, all of them Indian.
We found smaller scale maps of Kerala and Tamil Nadu, which will help us when we're on the road. We also managed to buy 11 books for 400rps (works out about 50p a book), as opposed to the silly money they were asking in Goa and Gokarna for 2nd hand books, between 300 and 500 rps for a single book!
We also found a shopping mall, which was very exciting. There were an abundance of men's shops and a couple of what we would consider to be very small department stores. My favourite when I'm travelling is to go into supermarkets, I just love seeing what they have to offer. The store had more security and sales staff than customers and I found after a few minutes that people were following me to see what I had in my basket. Just so YOU know, I bought some peanut butter, nut brittle, a loaf of bread, a mosquito plugin thingy, some washing powder and I treated Dave to a bar of Cadburys chocolate.
Tomorrow we are off to Kalpetta, then onto Ooty, one of the main hill stations in Kerala. Don't know when we will have access to the internet again, so don't worry if you don't see anything for a week or two.
We will be picking up mail in India but because we're really not sure of our route yet I think it's best just to give you the one we KNOW for sure we will be going to:
ROBERTS Lynne
Post Restante
Kovalam
Kerala
South India
We estimate it will take us approx 4/5 weeks to get there, but they will keep post for 2/3 weeks (I think). So aim for a delivery date of no later than end January.
A man on the train yesterday had a carrier bag with the following on it:
MAA Collections
Fancy dress material, fancy midi,
fancy frock, fancy top, fancy saree,
cotton cargo pants, jeans pant, shirt,
dhoti, pant piece, shirt piece, Baba suit,
saree skirt etc.
Hemlata Building, 1st floor, near the traffic signal, next to the bus stand, Manohar District, Mangalore.
Laters
Reading: Never Let Me Go - Kazuo Ishiguro
To date:
The Last Grain Race - Eric Newby
Cancer Ward - Alexander Solzenhitsyn
Utterly Monkey - Nick Laird
Atonement - Ian McEwan
The Tesseract - Alex Garland
Mr Vertigo - Paul Auster
