Dave and I always said “the real backpacking starts in India”, since the last 2 and a bit weeks in the Maldives were more like a holiday (despite having our backpacks and island hopping).
We landed in Cochin international airport and I have to say, it was a wonderful experience.
I think when you think of India from the UK, you think chaotic, dirty and crowded. You hear about the scams and the way you can be hassled and touted. It sounds stressful. So we were 100% prepared for this, mentally and physically, ready to face the gauntlet of the airport and beyond in our 8 weeks across India… But our entry to the country was surprisingly relaxing, clean, friendly and efficient. We eased our way through customs and got our visas with a smile, collected our bags and then arranged a prepaid taxi to our accomodation.
The drive there was nice, lots to see out of the window, and the overall first impression was great!
We arrived during the height of the monsoon season. We had looked into this and had assumed that although the rain might be bad, it shouldn’t stop us doing any of the things we want to. The temperature is still hot, but not too hot (26-31°C) so it’s not cold or windy….
But unfortunately, India is facing unusual and unseasonal weather disturbances all over the country at the minute. There are major floods in the North and around Meghalaya (which is the number 1 place I wanted to go here in India), Delhi is breaking records for temperature and lots of people in the North, from Jodhpur to Amritsar, Agra to Varanasi, are dying from excessive heat because of a heatwave and added humidity. And Kerala, Karnataka and Goa in South India are on a red alert for rainfall… Eeek
We had accommodation booked just for the first few nights, and I had a rough plan of where I wanted to go and the route I wanted to take. It was:
- Kochi – 1 night
- Kerala houseboat (Alappuzha) – 2 nights
- Overnight train to Gokarna – 1 night
- Gokarna – 2 nights
- Hampi and Anegundi
- Dandeli and Ganeshgudi region
- Goa
- Mahabaleshwar
- Mumbai
- Gir National park (to see Asiatic lions)
- Udaipur
- Jodhpur
- Jaipur
- Agra
- New Delhi
- Amritsar
- Leh/Ladakh
- Manali
- Rishikesh
- Lucknow
- Varanasi
- Darjeeling/Sikkim
- Kolkata
- Meghalaya and Assam
Jam-packed, right?? Haha, well, the plan is flexible and we have 8-weeks… ☺️
We arrived in Kochi and spent one night in Fort Kochi, at a traditional style Kochi guesthouse, which was dark, full of mosquitos and smelled very mouldy… But we’re coming to learn that during monsoon, EVERYTHING smells mouldy, as everything is just constantly damp. Including, now, us haha
Fort Kochi was nice, we walked over to the promenade and saw the famous Kochi Chinese fishing nets, and all the colonial buildings, whether from the British, Dutch or Portuguese. We tried to go to a little local restaurant, but noticed that quite a lot were closed. Monsoon season is also low season for most of India, and locals take the chance to renovate, close up, or even go on holiday and escape the rains themselves.
I found a place from Google, and was delighted to see on the menu my ALL TIME FAVOURITE Indian curry: Dahl Makhani.
Sanskruti in Withington, Manchester where we live, is a vegetarian Indian restaurant, and over the years of being vegan has been a staple for me. It serves traditional Indian dishes (aka, not just your usual Bangladeshi dishes from the high street). I probably order take out from there at least once every 2 weeks, and although what I order might change each time, it ALWAYS includes Dahl Makhani 😋
So, poetically, our first meal in India ended up being my all time fave dish ☺️
So far we didn’t get much hassle, a few people wanted to say hi, take photos and we did get stared at A LOT. But it was all respectful and nice. People were smiling at us and children were waving.
One thing which we did notice was the rubbish, the bay and the beach was full of it, mostly plastic. The streets were not that bad though.
Something quite high on my list of Indian experiences was to stay on a house boat in Kerala. I’d read about it in National Geographic many years ago, and also seen it on many documentaries. So we booked to stay 2 nights on a house boat cruising the backwaters of Alleppey. I booked a traditional house made of reed and rattan, it had 2 bedrooms, but again because it was low season, it ended up being a private boat!
As we were still acclimatising to being in India, we opted to get a taxi down to Alleppey which cost us about £20 on Uber. We were told to meet them at the fire station, and eventually someone turned up on a moped who let the way along the canals to the boat. It was stunning.
The boat stay was all inclusive, and I have to say, our meals were very very good. All cooked fresh on the boat and mostly from local Keralan ingredients, things like banana flower, jackfruit, lots of coconut, beetroot, gherkins, papaya, honey bananas, we were truly spoiled with food.
Chefs here also believe in Ayurveda, an ancient system of medicine that originated in India over 3,000 years ago. It means “the science of life” and basically every ingredient in cooking is also meant as a natural remedy for something, or a prevention to disease.
Our chef told us about every ingredient in each dish, it was quite interesting!
The days on the boat were relaxed and lazy, it rained a lot, and we were pretty much constantly on the move during the day. Just sat on the main deck, watching the world go by.
It really was beautiful here, lots of birds too, and I was finally glad I had bought my binoculars. I am not sure I’ll ever use them for anything else now haha. Loads of Brahminy Kites, kingfishers, ibis (glossy ibis), drongos, cormorants, herons, and many other birds. And lots of people too, just getting on with daily life.
The rains added to the calm and serenity of the boating experience, the sound of the rain on the water and the reed roof was almost therapeutic. But it also meant we weren’t able to explore outside the boat much.
We travelled on the water between 11am and 5pm each day, mooring up in the evening. The mud and puddles here prevented us from getting off the boat much, and even the rain itself – this is not English drizzle. 10 seconds outside is enough to soak you through!!
We returned to Alleppey, aka Alappuzha, and looked for a cab back to Ernakulam train station. But there were none. So we walked a short walk to the main bus station in town, and luckily there was a bus ready and waiting to go the 3 hours back to Kochi.
The bus was great, it cost about 80p each and was comfortable. The windows were open, so the experience was loud and noisy with all the traffic and constant honking. But the bus is clearly the king of the road, so although the driving here in India is erratic, chaotic, and often quite dangerous, a bus seems like the safest place to be!!
The bus pulled into Ernakulam, and almost instantly the heavens well and truly opened. We hid under the shelter of the bus station for a while, and made sure our bags were covered with their rain covers. When it didn’t relent, we got an auto rickshaw to the train station instead.
Our overnight train from Kochi Ernakulam to Gokarna was one of the things I booked before we got here. I’d heard that for longer journeys on the trains (and especially the good seats on the sleeper trains) they sell out weeks in advance. So we booked our tickets a few weeks ago. The train wasn’t until the evening, so we checked our bags into the cloakroom for a nominal fee, and took a taxi to LuLu mall. Apparently one of the biggest in India.
We chilled in the mall, listening to the rain on the ceiling, and I bought a couple of T-shirts which cover my shoulders and chest and Dave got a memory card. Then we headed back to the station, a bit early, but at this point we were just waiting for the train…
We returned to the station to find that our train was due to leave 1.5 hours earlier than I had on my ticket!! I hadn’t received any notification of the time change, and I’d even been keeping an eye on the status online for our seat allocation. But it was not obvious the time had changed. Apparently we were running on a monsoon timetable and so all the schedules are different…
So it was very lucky we arrived at the station “early” as it was just in time to board and find our seats!
It rained the whole train journey, which was quite comfortable (although we were both very thankful for the travel pillows I made). And we both stayed up to read the live updates of England Vs Spain Euro final. But perhaps we shouldn’t have bothered haha.
We arrived in Gokarna at 6am, and a rickshaw took us in the pouring rain to the end of a narrow lane next to the beach. Our guesthouse was only accessible via a short walk along the beach. It was still chucking it down. We waited under a little shop front for a lull in the rain, then walked quickly to our hotel.
The next few days in Gokarna unfortunately were a complete washout. It rained (very very heavily) almost constantly for the full 3 days we were there… It wasn’t just the rains, but the winds were bad too, and the sea was brutal.
We had quite a few power cuts here too, one lasted the whole evening and overnight. Sleeping without AC in almost 100% humidity is not enjoyable haha and we were both relieved when the power came on again at about 4am.
On the 2nd day, we had to move room, as the area around our room had flooded completely, it was even over the step to our room. We bagged up all our stuff and I even put my surf shoes on to move rooms, we had to wade through almost knee deep water!!
The next room was nicer, and more importantly safer, higher up and with no flooding nearby. But the rain still did not relent. In the odd 30 minutes here and there that it did stop, we only had time to nip out quickly to the beach, and never managed to get too far before the biblical rain commenced again…
At this point we wondered what we were doing here…. We had left the UK (Manchester, no less) to escape the rain. And with the weather alerts in place, it wasn’t even safe to do any of the activities I had wanted, like visiting waterfalls and hiking in the region. We even read how some “monsoon revellers” (Indian locals who gladly travel to this region to experience the monsoon) had got stranded at a waterfall when the river broke its banks, and it took 3 days for them to be rescued!!
We saw whole trees washed up on the beach, and lots of little freshwater fish, pushed down the rivers and stranded in the sea. And rubbish, lots of rubbish…. We had read that Gokarna was supposed to be one of the nicest and cleanest beaches in India, even compared to Goa. And it’s apparently a kind of new “up and coming” Goa… But the rubbish, at least for us, was pretty unbearable, as there was hardly a patch of sand not covered… It was very sad.
So we assessed our options, checked a few weather maps, and decided to book a flight to Delhi, and then onward to Leh, Ladakh. Ladakh is a pleasant 25°C and blue skies at the moment, so we decided not waste an opportunity to visit this region in the far north Himalayas during the optimal season. And hopefully, after a week or so up North, we can return to the central Indian belt once the major heatwave has passed. That’s the plan anyway…
So we took a taxi from Gokarna to Bogmallo beach in Goa (very close to the airport) to wait 24 hours for our flight to Delhi. And yes, it rained here almost the whole time too haha…. But we did visit Bogmallo beach and it was pleasant. Very clean compared to Gokarna.
It really was a shame with the weather. We did expect rain, we knew we booked to come here in monsoon…. But from everything I’d read, we just didn’t expect it to be THIS bad. The news was reporting the worst rains in years and even in the guesthouse in Gokarna, they said they hadn’t had flooding like that in 10 years…
At this point, almost everything in our bags is slightly damp and smells mouldy, even just after we did laundry in Gokarna! It still smells!!
I hope we manage to find the sun in Delhi and Leh! If only to dry out a bit! Wish us luck!
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