Road Trip Day One

Monday 21 December 2009

After a very uncomfortable night - too much food and far too hot - an 8 am start!

I was supposed to start work today BUT the powers that be (Babu and Shoba) decide that we are to take a 3 day road trip before Christmas! Talk about spontaneity! Babu has decided to drive Shoba and I am to accompany them! I sense that I cannot say "No!"

Before we leave we ring the airport and mobilise some serious interest in my case. Then we actually go to the airport and I march into the arrivals section through three security cordons.

I am determined and they can sense this. I get a man to unlock the Lost baggage room but find nothing. Then meet up with "Sarah" of Emirates. I phoned her earlier and she is the first person who really takes a serious and sensible approach to my problem. Her analysis is that the bag tag must have come off somewhere along the way and the bag is stuck. So I fill in a 4 page form identifying most of the things in my bag and providing the combination lock so that they can open the bag without damaging it.

She then produces a voucher for USD $50 which is "inconvenience money" (not compensation) per day. I am entitled to three of these vouchers apparently but she said she would give me the other two the very next time I come to the airport. I am also to bring my sales receipts for the items I had to buy.

When the cash is handed over, it is more than 2,000 rupees. A veritable fortune here. Shoba thinks I was very clever for losing my luggage!

Whatever way you look at it - this is certainly progress!

By this time it is 11.30 am and not such a great time to start a very long drive North up the coast. The destination was Ootapalam a country town North of Kochin and inland near Pallakat. Shoba is hoping to buy a house there and needs to conclude business in a day or so. We are accompanying her with all her Kuwaiti luggage. Babu is taking some badly needed time off his work as coordinator and general network person

extraordinaire where he spends too much time taking care of other people's needs. I feel honoured to be invited along and am jumping at this chance to see some of the remoter towns in the Indian hinterland.

The journey is long - and 350 kms, 9 hours, with only

three stops. We navigate through typical Indian traffic honking and tooting and overtaking dangerously on badly marked, unfinished roads, some pretty frightful. I had offered to help drive but I am glad to say that Babu never called on me.

Photo Right:

Street scene in Kollam - Beach Road in front of the hospital!

I receive a call from Emirates mid afternoon to say that they have located my bag in Dubai (thanks to my description) where it had lost all bag tag and identification. The Manager suggested that I was partly responsible as I hadn't marked my bag properly. Anyway the anxiety is now over. I will be reunited as soon as I return from this trip. Such a relief!

We make two meal stops, the first one

unremarkable in décor and landscaping, except for the fact that I had never eaten a Thali before.

The second one is great. We stop at Sarovaram, a small hotel complex with pleasing brick architecture that they call "low cost". See photo to R and L.

It is well maintained and oozes confident understated class. We have a coffee break there, which is memorable for being Air Conditioned. We catch a sight of the inspired owner who runs a chain of other tasteful hotels.

The third is to drop something off at Babu's mother's place near Kochin and meet Babu's brother and family who live with her and run a small scale printing press in the outbuildings. A brief but charming visit and I come away with a sheaf of paper to practice my alphabet.

The view to L is of the sunset over the bay somewhere in Kochin.

Having done a fair bit of sleeping in the car earlier in the day, the coffee has stimulated me and I spend a happy couple of hours teaching myself Malayalam and comparing the writing and spelling and sounding on billboards and in a scrap of newspaper. Learned some new words and phrases like "Here heaven" (ie. Here it's heaven/heaven is right here!)… The alphabet is quite complicated and it will tae me some time to memorise all these strange letter shapes combining the letter 2 or 3, lying down Ss, capital Bs and endless strings of loops and legs. You want to say it must be an M, but it’s a T or a P… Frustrating!

We finally get to Ootapalam at 10.30 pm and check into the "Kelco

Residency" hotel. Shoba's brother in law Vinod has arranged everything for us and meets us on the road to guide us to the hotel location - off the main drag and through an unpromising area fetching up right near the rail station. Surprisingly modern and clean and right beside the LIC compound (Life Insurance Company of India) but otherwise it's a shanty town all around. Strange juxtaposition! But what a relief to arrive! And there is air- conditioning Yay! We grab some take away curries and repair to our room to eat them.

And now it's time to turn in.

[No broadband on the road so piling these messages up till I get home.]