Thekkadi

What an exciting day today was!  We traveled up on the Western Ghat Mountains to Thekkadi.  The roads were long and winding and definitely bumpy.  I attempted to take pictures while driving, but I only got a few good ones. 

Tea plantations 

More tea plantations

We took a break from driving at a church with great views of the area:

Photo courtesy Katie G.

Group shot

After checking in the hotel we immediately went to ride elephants!  The elephants were so cute and sweet!  

I'm on an elephant!

After riding elephants we toured a spice plantation.  I learned so much about how certain spices grow.  We saw cardamom, turmeric, pepper, cinnamon, ginger, vanilla, allspice, cloves, nutmeg, cocoa beans, coffee beans, kanthari, and rubber trees.  I think cinnamon was the most interesting.  Cinnamon is from the bark of a tree.  The rolled sticks of cinnamon come from the inner bark.  

Cocoa bean and pod

Cardamom 

Sheet of rubber from rubber tree sap

Ginger

Jeremy eating a Kanthari 

Tumeric

Allspice leaf

After that I walked around the town a little and had dinner, which I took a picture of because it looks disgusting, but was actually quite tasty.  

"Palak Paneer" with chapatti

Flowers of the day:

A Day in Thrissur

Per usual, the activities that were in our itinerary did not happen as planned.  That will happen when in India.  I’ve developed a list of relative terms in India:  time, clean, and plans.  There will be more by the end of my trip, I’m sure.  Anyway, we began at COSTFORD’s original headquarters in Thrissur.  (fun fact: Thrissur is the cultural capitol of India).  

COSTFORD's original headquarters

Art

COSTFORD's original headquarters 

We were only at the headquarters for maybe 20 minutes before we left to tour the Talukulam Vikas Trust headquarters.  COSTFORD helped set up the Trust, which provides funding for programs that improve education, housing, health, social security, and employment for low-income women in the local community in Thrissur.  We toured some sewing centers that were leased out.  These centers are what we would consider to be a “sweat shop.” 

Courtyard

This unit is making bras

This unit is making jean jackets for a company

As you can see, our perception of what a “sweat shop” is is much different than what it is.  Working conditions are decent: the rooms are cool, sanitary, and they are not harassed, etc.  They are provided training, meals, and decent wages.  The wages depend on what they are doing/making, but I heard one of 600 rupees a day.

Tea/Snack time!! --This occurs twice daily, by the way.

A tasty snack we had called "unni-appam"  Super fatty and awesome.

After the tours, we had a presentation about what the Trust was doing.  At one point, the panchayat (lowest form of local government) president stopped in and shook the hands of some people for the camera and then left.  It was bizarre.
Next, we visited a geriatric daycare center.  The elderly only come there during the day when their family is at work or school and go home in the evening.  When we walked in they were singing songs.  Some of our group even sang a song for them.  It was awesome to see how active the elderly were here.  No one was in a wheelchair and everyone was engaging in activities and with other people.  The center tries to keep them engaged and up to date on the news.  Which does not always happen in elderly centers in the U.S.  We talked with some ladies and Katie asked them what their favorite part of the center was and they said it was spending time with their friends that they have made there.  Such sweet ladies. 

After that we went to two small businesses that are part of the Joint Liability Group that a small group of women run.  The first one we visited, they made shoes, plates, bowls, etc. out of dried banana leaves.  The second one was a packaging unit for ground spices. 

The dried banana leaves

Shaped into a bowl - it's even reusable - probably not dishwasher safe.

Flip-flops

Spice packaging unit:

 

Before we went to our hotel to rest, we stopped at a shopping center and wandered around for a couple hours.  We just so happened to see a parade for Vivekananda's (temple we went to in Kanyakumari was dedicated to him) 150th birthday.  So, that was a cool surprise.  An even better surprise: in the middle of the shopping center was a Hindu temple where elephants live.  Obviously we had to go see the elephants and I touched him! So exciting.

Parade

Parade

Blurry.  But I think the excitement is still clear. 

Flowers of the day:

I'm Going On An Adventure!

Actually... I'm already on one.  And I finally have internet connection again, hooray!

Wednesday January 9:

We checked out of our hotel home in Trivandrum early in the morning to begin our 5-day long road trip traveling up Kerala to take a break from academics and do some sight seeing.  We drove to Alleppy and got on a houseboat to take a tour on the backwaters.  Apparently, they are called the "Venice of the East".  Literally all we did was sit on a houseboat, eat fresh fish, take pictures, and enjoy the scenery.  It was a great break from the city.  We docked and spent the night on the houseboat.

Not our houseboat, but similar style

Dana cheesin for the camera

Even Jerry was excited to be on the houseboat!

Those are all ducks! So many!

Our fish that we had for lunch. It was delicious!

Just livin' the life.

Kids traveled to school in boats!

Thursday January 10:

In the morning, we took a one hour boat ride while they served us breakfast.  Then they kicked us off the boat, so we drove to Fort Kochi.  On our way there, we stopped at a Marxist/Communist factory that takes the husks from the shell of used coconuts and weaves them into string, aka coir.  They make rugs and giant spools of weaved coir.  The ladies even made us bracelets for all of the girls with their bare hands.  Then we got back into our tour bus and kept driving (we do a lot of driving, by the way).  Once we got there, it was lunch time so Katie, both Dana's, Stephanie, and I went for lunch at this cute little hotel restaurant around the corner from our hotel.  It was quite the experience trying to figure out what the fish special was.

The restaurant we ate at

Dana 

After lunch everyone gathered and we went to view two cathedrals, a synagogue, and an Indo-Dutch museum.  Kochi is an extremely touristy area and some of the architecture reflects European architecture because way back in the day the French, Dutch, British, and Portuguese colonized the area.  On the outside of one of the cathedrals there was a sign with a little blurb and the first sentence was "This church represents the struggles that Europeans faced while colonizing the area."  Yes.  I'm sure it was very difficult for you.  After walking around and looking in some shops, we all hopped on a ferryboat and rode over to the mainland of Kochi (Fort Kochi is an island) to meet up with another India Winterim Class from the University.  I was excited because I knew a couple of the people in that class.  We chitchatted with them for about an hour about what our classes are doing and what everyones favorite part of India is.  They are studying eco-tourism and determining whether or not tourism can be eco-friendly and beneficial to the locals.  Both classes planned on going to a traditional dance performance, but our class had decided we wanted to go back to our hotel and rest.   We began walking back to the ferry when an events coordinator called telling us that the event was just for us.  So, we all had to pile into auto-rickshaws and find our way to the Cochin Cultural Center asap.  The dances were awesome.  I'm glad that we were able to make it.  There was one dance where they literally stood on a brass plate and moved around the floor on it!  Afterwards we caught the last ferry home and crashed in bed.

St. Francis Church

Behind each plaque like this, someone is buried.  There were quite a few of these.

Inside the church

Santa Cruz Cathedral

Sam from the other group and Jeremy in their kitty shirts!

Pictures from the dances:

Friday January 11:

In the morning we left for the "9th annual International India Development Coalition of America" conference.  And we were there almost the entire day.  It was pretty boring.  There were a couple good speakers, but for the most part I was pretty bored.  Finally we left and drove to our next hotel in a little town right outside of Thrissur.  On the way, we went through a toll booth and then our driver somehow managed to be on the wrong side of the highway.  Now, normally, this would not concern me if we were on a normal road, but we were on a highway that had a border between the roads going different directions.  We had to do a three point turn in the middle of the road and pull a U-turn by the toll booth.  That was interesting.  Our poor driver.  He was probably so embarrassed.