From googling Murdeshwar one of the things that struck me was that everything was called RNS. A tourist board maybe? Nope. Apparently RNS basically owns the entirety of the place, having been born there, he decided to revitalise it with a shit ton of money, a giant statue of Shiva, a gopura and the words RNS emblazoned on the skyline. It's all a little odd. The statue and the gopura, a kind of Hindu pagoda look nice from afar but up close it all seems a little Disneyland. This especially apparent when you spot that it has UVPC double-glazing, the scourge of Middle England, in all of its windows. However, the diving was incredible, which was really why I came. I have officially done my first two qualified dives and it was amazing, alas, no turtles, but plenty of coral and hundreds of fish and a (possible) shark! I actually had a great time in this weird little town and kept getting taken down alleys to illegal bars when people found out I was English, the food was great and I met my first unattractive Swedish couple ever. That, and while eating lunch in a tiny restaurant where they spoke no English I turned around to find a holy cow had wandered in and was stealing all the rotis.
From Murdeshwar I zoomed down to Cochin (on a train! I actually managed to get on one this time!) just in time for the Biennale. I won't lie, this was complete fluke and I had no idea of its existence but it has to be better than the Sharjah Biennial, which was summarised by my mother as "almost as good as a class of Year 2 students".
Cochin is gorgeous, though actually, the fort, with its heritage hotels and fishing nets is nothing spectacular, but the roads off of it, leading to Jew Town, are an amazing rarity in India. More like Marrakesh, old buildings are crumbling but have yet to be demolished and replaced by high rise apartments. Antique shops full of old doors, battered old cameras and bronze idols were penny-a-piece. While it is decidedly shabby, it is also incredibly chic, which is perhaps why the Biennale was curated so well and was genuinely interesting. We tend to forget how lucky we are in England, that we can toddle off and see world class art by getting on the tube. Often art galleries and especially modern ones in places like India are full of mediocre (at the best) and unsophisticated work. Of course, all the best is usually already in the Tate, and it is investment that is the problem, but not so in Kochi. I was happily surprised at how amazing it was, and the spaces, old spice warehouses, docks and public gardens had been appropriated amazingly for a mixture of modern art and traditional music. I even stumbled across an amazing (and frankly unphotographable) collection by home grown London girl and Sri Lankan Tamil Maya Arulpragsam a.k.a M.I.A, which was incredible.
I'm definitely in the south now, and things have changed. Besides the languages, the appearance and the thinning out of Russians, it's the food and the culture that are most apparent. After being overcharged for bad seafood in Goa it was amazing that when I asked for crab in Kochi they obliged by sitting me on the back of a motor bike and taking me to the fish market to chose one, which happened to weigh about a kilo and cost the grand total of £5.50 along with a teapot of "special tea", also known as Kingfisher. Life here is a little more carnivalesque and a little more fun.
From Kochi I headed down to Allepey, apparently once dubbed the Venice of the East, I find this comparison as accurate as Jordan being called the Kate Middleton of Essex. Dirty, busy, full of highly polluted canals populated only by plastic bottles, at first it's just another busy Indian town. But once I got out into the "backwaters", the marshy, river strewn land between the towns and the sea, I became slightly more sympathetic to the comparison. Sliding through tiny villages perched on little canals in the middle of nowhere, accessible only because I was too cheap to rent a houseboat and went on a canoe, it was gorgeous, striking and felt like the "deep south" that people have talked about. I had the most incredible thali, which was replenished with well meaning vigour. The whole thing was jut beautiful and I was sad to leave. Kerala deserves more time than I could give it and I would love to take the little local ferries from one place to the next, jut exploring. Alas, I had an appointment to keep in Pondy, a good 750km to the East, and so had to dash off.
Now I am in Madurai (or was, it's taken me almost 5 days to find WiFi and post this...), half way between Kerala and Pondicherry, it's a temple town in Tamil Nadu frontier. More of that next time, this is far too long already. But tomorrow I land in Chennai, ready to be scooped up and taken to the little ex-French enclave of Pondicherry, home for the next two months. Let's hope that it's all it's cracked up to be, by god I need a glass of wine and a decent coffee!
Gx
Cochin is gorgeous, though actually, the fort, with its heritage hotels and fishing nets is nothing spectacular, but the roads off of it, leading to Jew Town, are an amazing rarity in India. More like Marrakesh, old buildings are crumbling but have yet to be demolished and replaced by high rise apartments. Antique shops full of old doors, battered old cameras and bronze idols were penny-a-piece. While it is decidedly shabby, it is also incredibly chic, which is perhaps why the Biennale was curated so well and was genuinely interesting. We tend to forget how lucky we are in England, that we can toddle off and see world class art by getting on the tube. Often art galleries and especially modern ones in places like India are full of mediocre (at the best) and unsophisticated work. Of course, all the best is usually already in the Tate, and it is investment that is the problem, but not so in Kochi. I was happily surprised at how amazing it was, and the spaces, old spice warehouses, docks and public gardens had been appropriated amazingly for a mixture of modern art and traditional music. I even stumbled across an amazing (and frankly unphotographable) collection by home grown London girl and Sri Lankan Tamil Maya Arulpragsam a.k.a M.I.A, which was incredible.
I'm definitely in the south now, and things have changed. Besides the languages, the appearance and the thinning out of Russians, it's the food and the culture that are most apparent. After being overcharged for bad seafood in Goa it was amazing that when I asked for crab in Kochi they obliged by sitting me on the back of a motor bike and taking me to the fish market to chose one, which happened to weigh about a kilo and cost the grand total of £5.50 along with a teapot of "special tea", also known as Kingfisher. Life here is a little more carnivalesque and a little more fun.
From Kochi I headed down to Allepey, apparently once dubbed the Venice of the East, I find this comparison as accurate as Jordan being called the Kate Middleton of Essex. Dirty, busy, full of highly polluted canals populated only by plastic bottles, at first it's just another busy Indian town. But once I got out into the "backwaters", the marshy, river strewn land between the towns and the sea, I became slightly more sympathetic to the comparison. Sliding through tiny villages perched on little canals in the middle of nowhere, accessible only because I was too cheap to rent a houseboat and went on a canoe, it was gorgeous, striking and felt like the "deep south" that people have talked about. I had the most incredible thali, which was replenished with well meaning vigour. The whole thing was jut beautiful and I was sad to leave. Kerala deserves more time than I could give it and I would love to take the little local ferries from one place to the next, jut exploring. Alas, I had an appointment to keep in Pondy, a good 750km to the East, and so had to dash off.
Now I am in Madurai (or was, it's taken me almost 5 days to find WiFi and post this...), half way between Kerala and Pondicherry, it's a temple town in Tamil Nadu frontier. More of that next time, this is far too long already. But tomorrow I land in Chennai, ready to be scooped up and taken to the little ex-French enclave of Pondicherry, home for the next two months. Let's hope that it's all it's cracked up to be, by god I need a glass of wine and a decent coffee!
Gx
