qWT2K9--the quasi World Tour 2009: Week 11: Kerala

We made our way to the south last Tuesday and spent an entire week in Kerala. We flew from Ahmedabad to Trivandrum and landed on a runway that was in the middle of a palm tree forest. Trivandrum, located on the western coast almost on the southern tip of the sub-continent is the colonial name and the capital city of Kerala. It’s Indian name is Thiruvananthapuram, which I cant even begin to pronounce but means “holy snake city”. Snakes are sacred in

India

(at least I’m under that impression), so much that if you get bitten by a snake you are considered purified and don’t have to be burned in a ghat when you die like we had seen in Varanasi. The weather in Trivandrum was hot and humid, much different from the arid north. I wasn’t convinced I was even still in

India

until I saw our taxi cab, the same Ambassador model from the 1950’s that picked us up in Kolkata. With that said, the south still seemed like a different world: The men wear skirts (really it’s just a big sheet they tie around their waist), the tuk tuks actually have room for luggage (bonus!) and the people are just about the friendliest we have encountered on the entire trip.

While in Trivandrum, Chels and I did some architourist stuff by finding the works of Laurie Baker, a “Ghandian” architect who did socially responsible, low income, green work. He died two years ago, but his office, Costford continues to operate with the same principles. We saw a coffee house he designed for a coffee bean co-op which is a 4 storey continuous spiral. Inside was a timewarp, it looked like a ramped 50’s diner, with booth seating on the perimeter and the kitchen and bathrooms in the center. The walls and seats were pink and turquoise. The ramped interior definitely did not meet ADA standards, but considering that I don’t think I’ve seen an egress/exit sign in this country yet, I’m sure it is of no concern. We also saw a campus he designed and low income housing under construction in one of the city slums. His brickwork is his signature, and reminiscent of when Alvar Aalto went through his red brick phase (muraatsalo summer house for all you AS2k5 peeps out there) with many different experimentations of pattern, scale, and arrangement. His low income housing also has clay tiles embedded into the underside of the concrete slabs, reducing the amount of steel in the slabs by 25% according to the project architect.

Our last night in Trivandrum we went to this huge old movie house that I can only compare to the Uptown in Cleveland Park only it was a little larger and not as grand. We saw 2012 for a whopping 35 rupees (75 cents!) which was cool to see because it takes place in DC, Tibet and India. They stopped the film mid-way and had an intermission which was strange. The audience was a bit chatty and talked on their cell phones during the show as well.

We left Trivandrum for Kollam on the best train ride of the whole trip. It was only an hour long but it was in the lowest class where we sat in a train car with no glass in the windows (only bars!) and looked out at the towns and countryside of southern Kerala. The doors were non existent and people would jump off of the train as it slowed down before we got to the station.

In Kollam we did a canoe trip through the backwaters, tiny canals that branch off of the river that runs parallel the coast in a similar way the Intracoastal Waterway runs up the gulf coast of Florida. We saw people building canoes, a tapioca farm, and a couple fish farms. I spent a good part of the time laying across my bench looking up at the palm fronds that arched over the waterway. It was very calm and peaceful. The next day we took an 8 hour boat ride up one of the larger waterways to a town called Alleppy. We were on a boat that sat maybe 40 people, but was only half full. We made friends with a couple from Austin who have been traveling since July and have no definite ending date. We swapped travel stories, talked about food we miss the most (we both more or less agreed on Guacamole). It made me feel good that they’ve also had “fat kid camp days” (their words) where they gorge themselves at McDonalds or other western fast food that they see every now and again because it is familiar and although maybe not eaten a lot at home, very tasty on this side of the world. We tried to outdo each other with “craziest bus ride” stories. They knew a guy whose friend Andy was traveling in Boliva on a bus when it got pulled over by a guy with a machine gun. The bus full of people was very nervous but after the machine gun guy stopped talking to the driver, the driver turned around and joyfully said in Spanish “don’t worry, they’re only robbing this guy!” pointing to the only foreigner on the bus, Andy. They took him off the bus with all of his stuff and when he returned he had only the boxers he was wearing. Thankfully, that beats anything we’ve had to encounter!!

When we arrived in Alleppy we went to our hotel which was a resort type place on one of the backwater canals. We stayed in a hut clad in palm leaves with a hammock and what seemed like the first piece of grass I’ve stepped on in months. It was perfect and we were happy to have a change of pace as we wind down the last 11 weeks of being on the move.

Our last week is going to be a fast one, we’re off to the beaches in Goa for 2 days, then Mumbai with a quick side trip to the Ellora Caves which Ted Wolner apparently talked up quite a bit in Arch History (chels remembers hearing about them, I don’t). I’m back in DC on Wednesday!

Pictures:

Laurie Baker Indian Coffee House, Trivandrum