Traveler's Tales: India

TRAVELERS’TALES

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Local celebrities Everywhere the Hurndalls went, they were stopped for selfies

INDIA

Alan & Alison Hurndall traveled to India with Audley

It’s late afternoon in the coastal city of

Chennai. Twenty hours ago, we were in England, slip-sliding through snow and ice in our winter boots. Now we’re sweating in the heat and sun, barefoot and jet-lagged, negotiating a jungle of pushbikes, rickshaws, scooters, and tuk-tuks. Welcome to India. We are at the start of a 950 mile road trip across the states of Tamil Nadu and Kerala. It’s a public holiday, and outside the Hindu temple – our first – there are thousands of people. It’s chaotic, but friendly.

The scene is a heady cocktail of noise and smells, incense fills the air, mixing with the aroma of the street food vendors, the scent of jasmine, diesel fumes and spices. People shout to make themselves heard above a cacophony of hooters and horns. At the temple’s entrance, a line of visitors jostle to deposit their footwear in a hut, others just toss their sandals and flip-flops onto a heap on the pavement. Flower sellers offer beautiful yellow and mauve garlands.

Inside, a holy man greets us with a bow, his hands clasped together in prayer.

Kapaleeshwarar Temple dates back to the 7th century and is the size of a block of flats. It stands as a magnificent, colorful, if somewhat spooky attraction. A cast of myths and legends – gods (some halfhuman, half-animal) peacocks, elephants, snakes – stare down at us.

Here they worship Shiva, the protector against evil and one of the most important gods in the Hindu pantheon. Whole families drop to the ground before his image, girls and women on their knees, boys and men flat out on their stomachs. A human line

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TRAVELERS’ TALES

stretches around the block. They’re waiting to be blessed by the priests and have their hands smothered in holy ash, the remains of a sacrificial fire where wood soaked in oil and herbs is burnt.

Devotees observe the ritual, wearing a red or white bindi on their forehead; they move clockwise around the temple, and nine times around the main shrine. Some even take selfies with the sacred cows. This is our first visit to India and, with our senses jolted into life, we’re already hooked.

HONK HORNS, PLEASE

Our trip was to take us on an engrossing journey across south India, through towns and villages, over mountains and along coasts, staying in cities, on rivers, plantations, at homestays and a beach resort. We had discovered quite quickly the first rule of the road in India: that there are no rules. They drive on the left, but that’s purely an opening negotiating

position. They actually drive left, right, center, and straight at you. Drivers overtake, undertake, pull out at junctions, on blind bends, and often travel the wrong way on one-way streets and highways.

Pedestrians are way down the food chain of road users, which can include stray cows, dogs, chickens, monkeys, mongooses, even peacocks. In the country, whole herds of cattle and goats cross motorways, and farmers think nothing of drying their rice crop in the road, blocking one of the lanes. The thing is, nobody seems to mind. Horns are used as a method of communication rather than in a fit of aggression.

I had soon worked out that Indians are actually excellent drivers, always expecting the unexpected, and judging every morsel of space with precision. Whizzing past an inch from your nose at 30 mph while crossing the road doesn’t even constitute a near miss. It’s as though every road user is protected by a mystical, magnetic force that prevents them ever crashing into each other.

KERALAN WATERWAYS

Two weeks in, and we find ourselves in ‘the Venice of India’ – the Kerala backwaters. We are floating on a houseboat, a former grain barge, which has been converted into a luxury vessel. These wooden-hulled boats are the length of a bowling alley and covered in thatch. They’re like floating cottages. There are 2,000 such crafts along the 560 miles of interconnected canals, rivers and lakes that make up the backwaters where freshwater from the Ghat Mountains meets the Arabian Sea.

We’d boarded at noon yesterday, cruising the waterways and canoeing the narrower inlets. The people here live off the waters and the fertile rice fields. They don’t seem to mind. Children, immaculate in their school uniforms, waved from the banks. Women did their washing in the waters, then slammed the dripping wet clothes on the obligatory flat stone. Apart from the skipper, engineer and a chef, who served a fish lunch and a buttered chicken masala dinner, we have the boat to ourselves.

It’s now 5:30am and I decide to greet the new day from above. I slip out of bed and tiptoe upstairs. There’s a perfect stillness everywhere. The only sound is birdsong echoing across the water, lit by the fading blue moon and the shimmering lights of various vessels moored on the banks.

There’s a 12-hour curfew from 6pm every day to give fishermen exclusive use of the river at night. But they’ve packed up. Even the mosquitoes are gone. Gradually, the sun stamps its golden glow over the paddy field beside us, creeping across the water. The first movement comes from the birds. A lone kite hovers above, egrets land in a huddle in the fields and, amazingly, whole squadrons, literally thousands of migrating birds, cross the bend in the canal ahead. It must be a navigation point.

On the stroke of six, the boat opposite slips quietly from its mooring. Within minutes the commute has begun. A barge drifts by with a cargo of sand, then a fleet of college rowers practicing for their regatta, apparently a big event around here. A man emerges from his home to bathe in the freshwater canal. The sky changes color, now streaked with purple. It’s overwhelmingly beautiful.

A breakfast of fruit and fried eggs is ready. The backwaters are awake. And if there’s a more magical dawn, I’ve yet to see it.

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