Friday 21 January 2011

Pastries, bus depot and beginning of the backwaters

So I spent most of my time in Puducherry eating my way around all the bakeries. On the 19th January we caught the bus to Trichy which was a more pleasant ride compared to the night bus we took before. As we entered Trichy I wished we stayed in Puducherry all I can describe Trichy as, is a transport hole of South India. I was gutted after Puducherry but hey it was on our way to Kerala! We found a place to stay, owned by a six fingered man- very strange! The place we stayed was nice we had our own bathroom- a luxury but the room we were in was actually the guy's room and so we had to put up with him coming in to our room to get clothes and his comb etc. It was about 15 min walk from the amenities through a friendly suburb with kids hanging on your arms and goats and cows everywhere! In fact when we were walking back from the local shop a bull ran around the corner and smashed into a cart full of shoes and knocked over two women into the air. The bull then ran past Dave and I and ran down the road! I was the craziest this I have seen in India, these women flew into the air and one landed on her head, but she was fine, thankfully!

Unfortunately at our stay in Trichy Dave had to make a trip to the hospital because he has been feeling lethargic and has had a bad stomach for a few days, this hospital was way bigger than the garage we visited before so we though swish but we were wrong - like many times in India- again!

We were directed to the emergency room (don't worry it wasn't a emergency) where we had to take our shoes of ewwwwwwwwww I hear you all cry and yes the feeling was ewwww. Dave was then seen by two nurses who kind of just played with him, taking his pulse and temperature until the main doctor came and she did all again anyway.

We explained to her the problems and asked her for some tablets to get rid of the bug but she thought we asked for Imodium and so we had to listen to her give us a lecture about how this would be bad- all we were asking here was for antibiotics but thats what happens with language barriers.
The next thing the doctor wanted to do was keep Dave in on a drip- it was totally unnecessary as he didn't need one! So we said no. Eventually we got the tablets Dave needed and hopefully he will be on the way to recovery!!!!

So we spent three long days in Trichy and finally we were on the overnight train to Cochin, the train again as usual was fantastic experience we were sad it is going to be one of our last.

We arrived in Cochin at 6am and walked with our heavy packs to the bus station refusing dozens and dozens of auto-rickshaw drivers! They don't understand how us travelers like to save money by walking everywhere!!! We then grabbed a quick breakfast and jumped on a bus to Appelley which is where we are now. It is the gateway to the backwaters, we are going to take a ferry tomorrow from the main jetty so we can visit and stay at the Matha Amirthanandamayi Misson Ashram which is a place where people meditate and do yoga ect. The main person who runs it is called "Amma" and she spends here time doing marathon hugging sessions with her followers!!!
So we are pretty excited about this trip!

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