From North to South India: My Journey Across Kerala

Entry Written From My Guest House in Kochi, Kerala on February 21, 2014

Pretty much everybody I know in India told me to visit the state of Kerala during my travels. As the southernmost tip of India, Kerala is known for its lush tropical landscapes and laid back vibe. Months ago, the crazy and hectic city of Mumbai was my only basis of comparison for the country and I never would have thought "lush" and "laid back" existed in India.

Well, I gave up on the resistance and figured I might as well check out what all the hype was about. With only a week to explore Kerala before I had to return to Mumbai, I stayed mainly on the beaten track and gave myself ample time to explore its three highlight areas: the hill station of Munnar, the backwaters of Alleppey and the colonial city of Kochi. My visit to Kerala actually felt like a laid back vacation. I spent most of my time just hanging out with fellow travellers as well as my favourite person in the world (myself, duh).

The best part about travelling in the tropics: the occasional surprise room mate to keep me company.

I stopped by Bangalore on the way down to meet a few social entrepreneurs, one of them being my friend Anubhav whom I met during a Dasra course. His early-stage social business is working on transforming hospital care both within India and the United States by arming caregivers (loved ones of hospital patients) with the tools and knowledge to provide care both during and after a hospital visit. He has a really cool job of travelling around India and implementing his service into his clients hospitals.

We got bored in Bangalore and decided to watch Robocop at this old school theatre where the food concessions and waiting area were all outdoors. It was a cool blast from the past.

What’s a Hill Station?

As far as I know, hill stations are unique to India. They are a colonial by-product created by the British inability to cope with hot weather during summer months.

I visited Munnar, one of the most legendary of all the hill stations. Munnar’s lush valleys used to be teeming with forests and wildlife. The local king wanted to keep it that way but the British had other plans saw potential in the area for supplying tea for the empire. As usual, the British had their way but not without the brutal exertion of colonial power that we would all rather forget.

89% of the tea in the world comes from Asia. I can believe it.

The land was returned to the king when the British rule of India ended. Today, the plantations are largely owned by one of India’s major conglomerates. Its 16,000 workers make $3.50/day if they meet their daily quota of 22kg. Believe it or not, that is considered good money in this part of the world.

I decided to go trekking in the hills with some newfound friends from Bristol

Huff. Puff. Huff. Puff. This better be worth it.

We climbed up to 2,400m above sea level which I guess is a big deal in South India. We were above a cloud line and enjoyed this mind blowing morning view. The ridge here separated a valley of fog on the left and a valley of clouds on the right.

Treks were banned a couple days before our hike. Two notorious murderers escaped from the local prison and ran for the hills. They murdered one more person before they were caught by the dogs. How can someone be so screwed up that their first thought when getting freedom for the first time in a while is “hey bro, let’s go murder another person.”

The Ultra Touristy Backwaters

Alleppey’s legendary backwaters comprise hundreds if not thousands of channels on which entire local communities are based. Houseboating on these backwaters is supposed to be one of the must-do’s in the region. I figured it would be super touristy, and it was, but it was a good chance to kick back and relax.

I saw hundreds of these houseboats during my day on the water. Some of they were mammoth boats with 4 bedrooms and even upper floor conference halls.

Our houseboat was quite humble by comparison.

This was our view for most of the ride. Our Captain had this great Avengers umbrella which he propped up whenever the sun got unbearable. We were pondering why he didn't just build something more permanent on the boat since he does this every day.

This is Beeni, a local tobacco of sorts. It's legal (it can be bought at any retail store) and I don't know what's in it other than dried leaves. It's pretty fantastic stuff.

I shared the houseboat with a real cool Danish dude named Jesper and we had great conversation while being served up delicious food from our own private chef. He spent some time in Auroville (hippie centre India) so we totally got into environmental discussions and talked about the state of the planet. I need to meet more like-minded yet pragmatic hippie types in my life.

A white stork battling a black cormorant. This is probably one of a few nature action shots I have ever taken during my years of shooting. I don't know how those National Geographic dudes do it so consistently.

Café Life in Kochi

My last stop in Kerala was its largest city: Kochi. A confluence of influences from China, Europe and the rest of India, Kochi is a cool spot with an amazing character. There wasn't much sightseeing in the city which made for a great 4.5 days spent to unwind and relax.

  

Beautiful Chinese fishing nets off the coast of Kochi. Given their manual intensity, they don't serve much of a function these days other than impressing tourists.

There is an amazing café culture in this city and I spent nearly every day at a different coffee shop hanging out and catching my breathe. I’m learning to compose music as a new hobby and as a stroke of luck I ran into a fellow traveller I met while I was in Alleppey.

For whatever reason, Ulf was travelling with five pairs of glasses so we did a funky photoshoot with them. Our backdrop was literally the wall of a coffee shop. These turned out really cool. I think I need to do more random photoshoots while travelling.

There's nobody better I could have asked for as my first electronic dance music teacher than a German DJ. He showed me the basics of the software I already had on my computer. Music production, here I come!

Tales of Rajasthan: Where The Dark Knight Rose

Entry Completed On a Rooftop Overlooking Tea Plantations in Munnar, Kerala on February 16, 2014

My next stop in Rajasthan was Jodhpur, a beautiful city dominated by the Mehrangarh Fort, the most epic urban fort I have ever seen. Jodhpur is called “The Blue City” for its houses which are covered in indigo as a means to cool its homes and ward off insects. 

My Introduction to Jodhpur

Sometimes, guest houses get really pissed off at rickshaw drivers for taking their customers “for a ride”, often charging higher than they should or even trying to drop them off at the wrong guest house. However, this interaction took the cake in rickshaw-hate:

*I just got off a bus in Jodhpur and had to find a rickshaw to get to my guest house*

Me on the phone with my guest house: So you told me to call you if the rickshaw drivers at the station were charging any more than 30 rupees for a lift to your guest house. Well, this guy wants to charge me 80. What should I do?

Guest house: Okay. Say this to the rickshaw driver: “go fuck yourself, you fucking bastard”

Me: Uhhhh… I’ll just pass the phone to the driver and you can negotiate for me. Thanks.

The city itself is extraordinary. While I was lounging at a rooftop café, I watched a troop of monkeys descend from the mountain and make their way through the rooftops of the city. Locals and tourists alike crowded the rooftops of the city to watch them parkour effortlessly across the cityscape. At night, I only needed to look up to see silhouettes of monkeys flickering across the sky. I would have enjoyed the sight even more if I didn’t have a new found hatred for monkeys in India.

I found this painting inside one of the palaces. I count 34 women in this photo. The king must have read The Game.

Where The Dark Knight Rose

As the backdrop for the desert scenes in The Dark Knight Rises, Jodhpur was totally a part of my Batman pilgrimage. I remember resting under a tree where bats roosted at night and watching in awe as they flew in and out, spreading out their silhouetted wings against the starry sky.

Seriously, how could you NOT film a Batman movie here?

That circle is the "prison" that Batman climbed out of during The Dark Knight Rises. So the prison was photoshopped, but if it were real I would have wanted to visit it.

Most of the darkest crannies of Rajasthan's forts are soaked with the sour stench of bats

A Local Family Experience

Sometimes there are benefits to travelling solo. I needed someone to help me take a photo and saw a young man playing catch with a boy at the fort’s parking lot. We started chatting and it turns out Shyam is a PhD candidate in Electrical Engineering at the Indian Institute of Technology at Delhi (ie. He is an insanely smart man). He invited me to his home for dinner and I gladly took up the offer to get a glimpse of family life in India. We had a great conversation about philosophy and shared an incredible meal. His family was curious about my story and I spent some time chatting with them too. 

It was one of the coolest experiences I had in India to date and I doubt it would have happened if I weren’t travelling alone. I will meet up with Shyam later when I visit Delhi and hopefully he can show me around India's famous IIT campus.

Our photo taken by Shyam's nephew. This was a very traditional meal in India. We sat on the floor and ate with our hands, something I'm getting a lot better at every day!

Off The Beaten Track to Creepiness

As much as I loved Jodhpur, in usual Henry style I wanted to get off the beaten track and decided to check out a historic small town called Bundi. It is a place full of history, charm and… creepiness. Everybody in the town was excessively nice to the point where it just seemed weird. 

I stayed in a 450 year old guest house for $4/night with a lovely overly welcoming family. The Hadi Rani guest house was named after one of the most revered queens in Bundi history. It was a time of war and Hadi’s newlywed husband looked faint at heart as he was leaving her to head to the front lines of battle. In an act to prevent him from having a cowardly excuse to return to his lovely wife, she heroically cut off her own head with a single stroke. He won the war so I guess she did something right.

This painting was hanging right outside my room. Yes, she cut off her own head. Yes, her neck is spewing blood everywhere. Yes, there is blood dripping off her sword. Yes, she is still smiling

They built this weird gnome display in the corner of my room. It was creepy as fuck.

On top of the overall weirdness of the place, there was some eerie charm to it as well. There was a wind chime in the main courtyard that sounded more melodic than your ordinary wind chimes. In any other circumstance, it would’ve added character, but in a place like Bundi that wind chime totally gave me the shivers at night. The windows blasted open in the middle of my first night in Bundi with the curtains flapping madly against the wind. I was ready to shat my pants. 

At least the town itself was quite spectacular. The palace was pretty amazing for a place off the beaten track.

My Journey to Bhangarh, the Most Haunted Place in India 

As if I didn’t get enough of the creeps in Bundi, I decided to make a trip to Bhangarh a couple days later. Bhangarh is the only place in India (and in the world that I know of) which is legally haunted. As in, nobody is legally allowed to stay there overnight because anybody that has tried was never seen again.

Anyways, I went there during the daytime and there was nothing eerie about the place at all. I was contemplating setting up some video cameras at night but never got around to it. The only thing scary that happened to me was a large macaque that jumped me to get one of my bananas. I’m really starting to hate monkeys here.

My best scary ghost pose

I think the ghost stories are a load of bull. Besides the bad pun, I want to call this guy "The Decimator". Everyone in the town was scared as hell of him. He was MASSIVE and devouring everything in his path. I watched him eat a whole 6-pack beer carton. What a beast.

I Love Local Experiences

My local bus to Bhangarh was another bone rattler. Local buses in Rajasthan have a glass-separated compartment for the bus driver with a side bench inside for overflow passengers. As I moved my big backpack to the driver compartment to create more space for other passengers, a young boy and his mother on the side bench excitedly beckoned me over to sit with them.

They were so pumped to have me there even though there was a clear language barrier. It was an amazing local interaction and the young boy was awesome.

Boy: Your name?

Me: Henry

Boy: Which… village are you from?

Me: Um… I am from the village of Canada

Boy: Oh. Very nice village! Which… village will you go next?

Me: Next, I will go to the village of Nepal

Boy: *Huge smile beams over his face*

I was laughing so freaking hard. They got off the bus to catch the next leg of their travels and I wished them a safe journey. I love the locals here.

Breaking My Comfort Zones

I started to realize that I was almost getting into a travel routine of taking photos, processing them, then blogging about my experiences. I decided to do something FUN and get out of my comfort zone. There’s a British company here called Flying Fox that operates a zip-line experience at the Mehrangarh Fort and it was just epic blasting back and forth across the fort and the valley beneath it. 

Did I mention I am scared of heights?

Zipping back and forth across this valley was one of the most fun moments I had in India

I explored an abandoned fort in Bundi. Now overgrown with vegetation and falling apart, it is nothing more than an echo of an empire long passed. It was just great to get away from the regular tourist crowds. 

I had to go through this weird doggy door to get into the fort

I rambled around and wanted to see if I could get to the top of the complex. I saw this broken staircase and nearly abandoned my mission. I had pretty much zero faith that it would support my weight because it was missing a supporting step. The drop was enough to break my ankles and there would have been nobody around to help me. 

I don’t mind taking risks but they have to be calculated. This was a stupid risk to take. In the worst case scenario, I would have been stranded there overnight in an area littered with testosterone-charged macaques. 

The missing staircase. Doesn't look like a big deal but this kind of stuff freaks me out.

Victory face!

The view from the top of the fort. Doesn't look like much but I got it to myself and did some meditation.

After a few hours of rest I explored the fort some more and finally ran into some people. They were excited to get a photo taken with me.

Tales of Rajasthan: Toilets, Forts and Marble

Entry Completed from The Bone Rattler (What I Named My Bus to Jodhpur) on February 5, 2014

I really should be reflecting on what will soon be the halfway point in my sabbatical. I just completed my time in Mumbai and my day-job office hours with my volunteer stint at Dasra. Some serious reflection and thinking is in order about how I have grown over the past few months and how I can meaningfully direct the last half of my sabbatical. 

Instead of going through this necessary reflection, I’m writing this blog because writing about my past events and random ruminations is much easier than thinking about myself. The things I do to procrastinate what really matters…

On the Road Again

I am back on the backpacking trail after 3 months in Mumbai. There is a huge Dasra conference that I won’t miss for the world coming up in a month, but until then, India is my oyster. My plan is to cover Rajasthan in Northern India before shifting towards Southern India to visit some social businesses. I am really seeking to understand the solution ecosystem and to learn first-hand what makes impactful organizations tick.

Long bus and train rides are back, along with the blogging that comes with it!

A Day of Toilet Shenanigans in Udaipur – February 2, 2014

I never thought toilets would be the theme of an adventurous day in the life of Henry but today was the day. For the first time ever in my life, my room had a toilet built so close to the wall that I couldn’t sit down on it. There was about 6 inches of clearance from the front of the toilet, and despite completely defying any sense of logic I had, I tried to give it a shot figuring there must have been some method to the madness. Nope. It is impossible for a grown man to sit on that toilet. 

Why oh why did someone invent this cruelty???

Luckily, my guest house had a toilet I could use at its rooftop restaurant. It was a squatter toilet… a toilet design I really consider the bane of my existence because my legs can’t squat for shit (literally). 

So, fast forward about 3 hours and I was having lunch at what looked like a decent place before exploring the epic city palace. I haven’t been frugal with food lately because I’ve had enough recent run-ins with bad stomachs. My fatal mistake: the food was really spicy and I needed just a sip of water to cool my palette. The server delivered what he promised was a glass of filtered water but I’m 99% sure that’s what hit me. 

Looks delicious. Tasted delicious. But it was a stealthy killer.

They didn’t have a toilet at all. The nearest one was at the palace. I was in emergency mode. The cost to get in was about 300 rupees and I gave the ticket counter guy a 500 rupee note. Since that’s a larger denomination, he inspected the note for about 7 excruciating seconds. Then he ran it through a counterfeit detection machine not once, nor twice, but three times. I was dying. 

Imagine a beautiful Indian palace entrance courtyard. Now imagine a Chinese guy running like a mad man across the courtyard towards the nearest toilet sign with his arms flailing through the air. That was me. I arrived at another squatter toilet but I didn’t care.  

Most washrooms in India don’t supply toilet paper. Luckily, I had toilet paper in my pocket from using the restaurant toilet earlier in the morning. I guess I was using a staff toilet because as I was leaving I noticed a whole roll of toilet paper sitting in a nook outside the washroom. I grabbed about 8 sheets just in case. The gamble paid off. 

About 200m into the palace, I had to go again and ran to the next washroom. I had just enough toilet paper to finish the job and walked back to the first toilet again to grab more. This time, I think I stashed about a whole metre of the stuff. By the time I re-entered the palace I had to go again. I usually try to avoid drugs but I had no choice but to pop some Imodium (a critical day bag supply in India) and continued with my day.

Nice looking courtyard right? I know it quite well. I paced across it several times in a state of emergency.

A throne fit for a king. This is an old-school toilet I found in the palace.

Fast forward another 3 hours and I’m at the palace reception hall which they converted into a convention centre. One thing I learned from my first backpacking trip is that convention centres have amazing toilets. Also, they have these things in India called potty showers which are effectively hoses you can use on your ass for a “wet yet clean” finish. Given a full day of diarrhoea, I was pretty excited for an opportunity to proactively stay ahead of the bowel curve. In my excitement, I kind of went in the ladies washroom by accident…

What a day. 

The rewards for my day of flatulence: opulent interior designs

 An island palace AND a mountain top palace

Beautiful sunsets 

Phenomenal city views

Romantic Candle-lit Dinner, for One, Please

There are definitely moments when it sucks big time to travel alone. I decided to treat myself to a nice dinner at a posh restaurant overlooking Lake Pichola and two of the gorgeous palaces of Udaipur. The electricity was out so only the most beautiful parts of the city with backup generators were lit up. The sky was filled with an ocean of stars and fireworks were being launched around the city (kids playing with fireworks I presume but beautiful nonetheless). And I was enjoying it all for myself. Moments, like that, are meant to be shared. 

The palace view I had all to myself

My situation is completely self-inflicted for opting to roll solo. It’s a little harder to find company in India than anywhere else because hostels are much less common here. They say you have to really like yourself to travel in India. I’m starting to learn.

This couple looked quite great together. The shot was irresistable.

Kumbhalgarh: The Real Life Helms Deep

Remember that super bad-ass fort in Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers? I think I saw a real life version of it today. This is one massive fort perched atop a mountain 1100m above sea level. It winds into the distance for 36km making it the world’s second largest wall, usurped only by the Great Wall of China.

Whoooooaaaaaaaa

Like Helms Deep, Kumbhalgarh was only taken once in its entire history, and even then, its invaders only held onto the fort for two days. I guess it would have been taken back quicker if they had a wizard and a bunch of horse dudes for backup.

The definitive moment I realized that I am starting to look like a Korean pop star. I need to 1) stop doing touristy shit 2) get a hair cut

Marble, Marble Everywhere

I site visited one of Dasra’s portfolio organizations, Educate Girls, located in a town called Pali roughly 3 hours from Udaipur. The organization does amazing work and I will definitely blog about my NGO experiences once as I learn more about the sector and can speak intelligently to it. 

What impressed me along the way was marble. Imagine miles upon miles of marble wholesalers lining a freeway for an entire 30 minute stretch. Rajasthan is extremely rich in marble and there seemed to be no shortage of it. By the time the material reaches North American shores, it is an item of luxury, but this is not the case at all at its source. 

A massive slab of marble, enough for a kitchen island countertop, would go for only $40 here. Even basic homes in rural areas have walls and ceilings lined with marble. It was out of my reality to see such an abundance of this exquisite white stone used so sparingly as a building material here. 

The final feast for my eyes was the Jain temple of Ranakpur. It is an incredibly temple, covering nearly an acre in land area, made entirely of… you guessed it. Marble. 

Alluring Ranakpur. The panorama highlights only a quarter of the entire temple.

Slum… Or Thriving Community?

Entry started from my studio in Bombay on January 18, 2014 and finished on February 2, 2014

From North American Suburban Roots to… Reality

I was raised in a middle-class North American suburb with a naïve assumption that the rest of the world shared my standard of living. Life gave me a shocking reality check when I saw poverty for the first time during my travels to Southeast Asia in 2008. What I didn’t expect was the subsequent humility I experienced when I witnessed how happy, generous and carefree the poor really are. We have this notion that “more” in every sense of the word is the road to freedom and happiness. Truthfully, less really is more when it comes to realizing that true sense of bliss within ourselves. I truly believe the rich can learn so much from the poor.

Urban slums have always fascinated me. Yes, at first glance there is an obvious sense of desperation and poverty that exists in slums, but underneath that there are tight knit communities working together through hardship to survive. I love how dense populations can exist on the margins of urban centres yet create self-sustaining ecosystems within themselves.

I set my sights on exploring Dharavi, the largest slum in Asia, where between 300,000 to about 1 million are jam packed into an area approximately one square mile in size. It is one of the most densely populated places in the world. More famously, it is the slum where the movie Slumdog Millionaire was filmed.

This was definitely going to be a solo excursion. Aiming for stealth and agility, I only took my backup point-and-shoot camera and a compass with me. Yeah that’s right… I left my DSLR and the heavy backpack that comes with it behind for this journey. It felt extremely liberating.

The Adventure Begins…

I kicked off my day of exploration by crossing this bridge I see all the time whenever I take a taxi into the city centre. I like to call it The Pipeline Bridge.

This was my overall game plan: make my way through the district, changing course to check out any points of interest and come out the other end. Dharavi was a complete labyrinth and I’m sure my actual path looked nothing like this.

Dharavi is within walking distance of my pad so I casually strolled on over. I still mistakenly ended up in another smaller neighbouring slum before some locals pointed me in the right direction. I couldn’t even find the largest slum in India on my own… I’ll never be able to navigate this country properly.

The Dharavi Experience

Upon entering the slum, I felt as though someone literally took ten thousand villages from rural India and crammed it into a high-density urban area. The sense of community I felt here was astounding. Small open courtyards scattered across the slum served as markets where people gathered and or played cricket. Some successful doctors, lawyers and businessmen prefer staying in slums over the rest of the city for this reason. I can believe it. I was greeted with smiles and looks of curiosity everywhere I went.

Dozens of locals came to me to chat and learn more about me without asking for anything in return. A couple locals even offered to show me around and I graciously accepted the improv slum tour. Before I knew it, I had over a dozen people following me with complete curiosity around what I was up to. Just by showing up and being my usual cheerful self, I brought laughter to many dozens of people throughout the day. I felt like I was the source of entertainment for the entire community!

A typical narrow lane in Dharavi. Much of the district is like this, creating tons of opportunities for adventures (that's my way of saying "getting lost").

Dharavi was one of the most enterprising places I have seen in the world. During India’s colonial era, the British created Dharavi as a means to move high-pollution industries away from more desirable parts of Mumbai. The slum is roughly divided into districts based on industrial sector. The total annual turnover of Dharavi has been estimated at over US$500 million. Around every corner I saw textile mills, printing presses, food preparation centres, restaurants, retail shops, recycling centres and many more entrepreneurial endeavours. Micro-markets were established near many of the production establishments.

Slums Are Here to Stay… For a While

According to the World Health Organization, the world’s urban population will nearly double from approximately 3.4 billion in 2009 to 6.4 billion in 2050. Almost all urban population growth in the next 30 years will occur in cities of developing countries. Just as North Americans all feel like a pilgrimage to New York at some point in their lives will help them in “making it”, rural populations globally are allured by the shining prospects of today’s megacities. It is hard to believe so many people would give up the village life to live in a slum like Dharavi, but even urban slums can provide more opportunity than rural India. Talk about putting life into perspective.

Some architectural shots of Dharavi. Obviously, sanitation is a huge challenge and it's really eye-opening to witness the sheer population density of a slum community

Even the lower to middle class denizens of India can afford their own maids and servants because there is so much cheap labour at the bottom of the pyramid. It’s really easy to completely overlook the hard working individuals in India who earn next to nothing while picking the garbage that we throw on the streets, cleaning our homes and cooking our meals.

I am extremely glad that I created the opportunity to see and experience Dharavi. At the end of the day every human, even the poorest of the poor, is amazing and deserves to be treated with dignity.

Of Course, India Isn't India if Locals Aren't Asking for Photos 

This dude greeted me with this gesture while saying "YO!!!!!" as soon as he saw me. He invited me to play cricket with his friends where I pitched a couple rounds

This is the first time someone has ever asked for only a photo of his haircut

Someone even got a shot of me!

And to Contrast... The Most Expensive Home in the World

This is Antilia, the home of the Reliance Industries chairman, Mukesh Ambani. At a shocking price tag of $2 billion, it is reported to be the most expensive home in the world and includes a staff of 600 to maintain the residence. It is roughly 20 minutes away from Dharavi by train. 

Did I mention it houses a family of only 6 people?