The beginning of our trip was marked with a newfound freedom the four of us have come to miss in the past 9 months. It was nice to feel like a capable human being again, even if it was only for a week. We met our driver at 5:45 at the temple in DC and were dropped off at the Indore airport. No problem, no questions asked. We met another AFS year exchange student from Italy who has also been in Indore for the past 9 months at Emerald Heights, another school in Indore. Why we were just meeting her after 9 months of exchange I have no clue. But I guess some things need to not make any sense for it to still be considered an exchange with AFS India.
There was a steady stream of students until the following morning when we amounted to 37 strong. That first night was just the four of us, 3-4 Italian exchange students, and a girl from Belgium, my cute friend Angelin. We talked about typical Indians and how excited we all were to escape our respective school prisons for a week of fun. We even went out for gelato! According to the 100% Italians the gelato wasn't actually 100% Italian but we all agreed it was a relief to consume something cool without being told we would catch a cold (happens most places when you ask for cold water even if it is 45 degrees Celsius outside).
The majority of our day was spent driving there while making plenty of stops along the way. Our first stop was at the Cheeyappara waterfall. It was more of a small trickle of water since it's been so long since monsoons. It was pretty but granted the whole drive was extremely beautiful so it didn't stand out too much. We did make it a point to eat as many coconuts as we could though starting at this stop. We all paid 40 rupees for the water and meat from one coconut. It's a fun process. You have you coconut saleswoman/man hack at your coconut until there is a small hole where you can consume your coconut water with a straw. When you start making slerping noises with your straw you hand it back to the machete dealer so they can cut it in half and pry the meat out of the middle so you can eat it!
That morning we went to Eravikulam National Park in Munnar which is a UNESCO heritage site, was the first national park in Kerala, and home to Anumadi the highest point in the Western Ghats. There was a lot of waiting around in the park for a different bus to shuttle us up to the mountain but I don’t think anyone minded too much. The weather was perfect and the views weren’t bad either. We made it to a higher point in the park where we were able to see a lot of the park, which was mainly tea plantations. We saw nilgiri tahr (a special goat) which only resides in that park and in Australia but Eravikulam housed the largest population. We walked a short distance up a path but shortly reached the limit at which tourists were allowed. It was a nice park but a little underwhelming because there wasn’t a whole lot to do and no extensive walking trail to explore on. The remainder of the day we drove around and visited more tea plantations and saw Sethuparvathipuram Damn.
Enough about my beef eating experience it’s probably not that exciting for the average American who consumes beef at least once or twice a day. After lunch we headed to a center where we could ride elephants! I was very very excited to see these elephants because it was a little unclear what we would be doing with them. Would we play soccer with them? Would we give them a bath? Would we go on a jungle safari? Would we get to cuddle with them? All perfectly logical thoughts in an 18 year old American girl's mind after seeing countless videos depicting such scenes on the internet. I guess I should say my hopes were not realized and we simply took a circle path for 20 minutes on our respective elephants stopping for a few photo opps along the way and getting to pet their trunk at the end of the ride. This was probably this most morally confusing thing I have ever done, after buy clothing so cheap it made me question if it was made by slaves. I mean you always hear how awful these elephant operations are but when you go it’s still confusing. The elephants lived in good conditions, had endless food, and plenty of breaks. They were all lady elephants (males get too aggressive together) who had likely been born into this job. They were all very hostile and just kind of stood there like sea cucumbers unless otherwise prompted to lift their trunk or open their mouth. Would I do it again? No, I don’t think I would support going to another elephant center like this again but I am glad I went and saw everything for myself.
Alleppey is the village known for house boats and the backwaters of Kerala which is formed from the canals and lagoons from the Arabian Sea. We spent one night in our houseboats, fitting 4-8 of us on each boat. We were all assigned to boats with random roommates, obviously adhering to one gender per boat protocol. One Thai exchange student and I were the odd ones out so we shared a boat with our AFS female staff. I was initially disappointed that I wasn’t with my Belgium and Italian buddies but in the end we were only on the boat for 2 hours alone and that was the perfect amount of time I needed to eat lunch, drink coconut water, and take pictures. So it all worked out!! We watched the sunset and even took turns steering our house boat until we arrived at our docking station where we would park (is that right? do you park a boat?) for the night. The banks of where we were staying had a path to small houses and farm fields nearby so we walked around a bit before it got dark. I tried to converse with some of the people we ran into in front of their houses or while they were in their canoes passing by. It didn’t go to well, they all only spoke Malayalam.
Dinner was prepared on our respective boats mostly coconut and banana infused cuisine which I didn’t mind. I ate a whole fish for the first time in my life, the head was on it and everything! I maybe swallowed one or two bones but I’m not worried after eating some of the street food in Indore i know I can handle anything. We had an unfortunately planned pathetic dance party on our boat after dinner. Because our boats were meant to hold a maximum of maybe 10 people, having over 40 on one boat dancing didn’t work out too well. We had to accept tree dancing, which is dancing with only your arms while you feet are rooted in one place to prevent any bouncing, or dancing 2-3 at a time. It was an awkwardly fun evening with everyone showing off their best Indian dance moves such as the hand mimicking the movements of a snake head, hip bouncing, shimmying, and pretzeling.
The morning of the 14th we ate breakfast on our boats while returning to our origional docking station and taking rickshaws back to our bus mobile home. Everyone was pretty drained from the night before so the 6 hour drive to Kovalam was a whole lot of sleeping and not a lot of talking.
We ate lunch in Thivandrum and visited a temple there, nothing new, then continued on to Kovalam. As soon as we checked into our hotel all of us ran down to the beach, stripped (to our more appropriate swimming clothes no stripping in a literal sense that would not go over well), and sprinted into the water. Soon we were all there playing in the water and body surfing waves. The water was so strong, I don’t think I’ve ever experienced an undertow so powerful before and as a result I came out of the water several times coughing up salt water and nursing my new sand burns on my knees and elbows. I wasn’t alone though, after a while everyone slowly came into the shallow water to try and sit through the shallow waves instead of attempting to battle the larger waves.
On our last full day in Kerala we drove to Trivandrum, the bottom most point of India. The southern most tip of India is very hot let me tell you. We toured the Vivekanada Rock Memorial which is a temple memorial 500 meters off the coast of the mainland. It houses a temple for Parvati’s footprint and a memorial for Swami Vivekananda who attained enlightenment on the rock. For some reason people think it is a good idea to go on this giant black rock in the middle of the summer in the ocean and walk around it barefoot. I think I burned any footprint I had on my feet off. Everyone looked like they were in the midst of a heat stroke and waking of nails as we hobbled around on the line of white paint on the ground to make the path a few degrees cooler. I swear I have never been hotter in my life. From this fire rock we observed the Thiruvalluvar Statue which honors the Tamil poet, Thiruvalluvar.
This was one of the most fun weeks I’ve had in India. I met so many incredible people from my own country and from all over the world. The neatest part was that even though we all came from different places and were going home to different places we were closer than ever because we all shared a similar exchange experience in India for the past year. Even if we didn’t know each other the whole year we were able to connect immediately with stories of being forced food, seeing a festival for the first time, or strict Indian boarding schools.
Here's a short video of some of the things we did in Kerala. Sorry no elephants, my GoPro died right as I got on my elephant friend and half of the video is of us at the beach. Since it was our favorite part of the trip it only makes sense that we put it in the spotlight.