Kathakali

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This evening saw us attending a Kathakali performance.

Kathakali is a traditional form of art in Kerala; Kathakali aims to tell a story through dancing and music. Costumes and make-up are grand and colorful; preparing the make-up already takes up hours. For more details on the origins, refer to this (very good) article in wikipedia.

The story, we saw, was a shortened version of Baka Vadha or Death of Baka, telling (or dancing) the story of Bhima deciding to fight the man-eating beast Baka, his encounter and struggle with Baka and finally his victory over the beast.

Exploring Kochi

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As odd as it may sound … so far, I have kind of avoided traveling to India – mainly due to the ambiguous feedback, I did hear from others (in about 60% “Oh my god … so intense, never again”, the other 40% “I loved it, BUT …”). However, I had to make it eventually – so here I was … booked on a one month trip, covering two weeks in Southern India and two in the North.

My trip started with a flight to Delhi, a loooooooooong (9 hours) lay-over at Delhi airport (thanks to Air India for canceling my original flight) and a short hop down South to the coastal town of Kochi.

With the tour only starting in the evening, I had a good part of a day to start to explore the area … which I did – covering the main bits around Fort Kochi, including the beach, the Chinese Fishing Nets and the churches.

Rochester … Fall-ing

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Business did bring me back to the United States yet another time – now to Rochester, Minnesota (and not New York, as the locals tend to stress) …

During the week the focus is on working with long days in the office, so the weekend is a nice chance to get out into the crisp fall air, and into nature to finally get some sunshine.

With a colleague I made the way from downtown to the Quarry Hill Park, a 3.5 km walk (one-way) to the Nature Center (with plenty of educational displays of local wild- and plant life; from here we used some of the parks trails to see the different habitats in the park (evidence below) … fall certainly is here … it will be winter soon.

Plovdiv – Amphitheatre Performance

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We were lucky enough to be in town to catch a performance of traditional Bulgarian dancing with live music in Plovdiv’s amphitheatre – a truely magical experience … seeing this millennia old theatre full of spectators with a performance on stage.

Narrow-gauge to Plovdiv (via Septemvri)

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We left Bansko in the early morning, now heading for Plovdiv.

The first part of the journey was by an old narrow-gauge train from Bansko to Septemvri (5 hours for about 100 km); here we changed to a modern train – to get into Plovdiv just another hour later.