Tag Archives: India

Back to Kochi …

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After breakfast we left the backwaters again; first by boat to Alleppey. From here we should have taken a public bus to make it back to Kochi – however with buses going unusually infrequent and always full (presumably due to some trains, that had gotten canceled earlier on), we ended up on private transport back to Kochi … where it all had started two weeks earlier.

Six of us (including myself) made it to the airport early the next morning to catch a flight up to Delhi – for the second part of trip up North …

From the Mountains to the Backwaters …

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We left Thekkady, heading back towards the coast. The route did bring us through the Cardamom Hills – with more great views … and back into tea country.

Kalari

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This evening we had the opportunity to go for a Kalari perfomance.
Kalari is the traditional martial arts of Kerala; the word Kalari translates to battle field.

 

To Madurai

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We left Pondicherry after a good breakfast in French bakery; first an hour by private transport to Villupuram and then continuing by train to cover the 300 km to Madurai – a train journey of a good five hours.

We made it into Madurai in the late afternoon; after a bit of freshening up in the hotel, we had an orientation walk to get glimpse of what was ahead of us tomorrow.

The walk finished at a cinema, where we had the opportunity to see Lingaa and as such get an introduction into Kollywood cinema. The film – of course – was in Tamil with no subtitles provided … one could follow the story, but obviously did not get the details on all the discussion. For my taste the film has been far too long (at nearly three hours), the story could have easily been told in less time …

Pondicherry

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From Auroville we continued to Pondicherry, a nice coastal town, which used to be – from the mid 17th century – a French colony and still shows it today. Some streets have the feel of a French town close to the Atlantic ocean, also this is probably one of the few places throughout my India trip with decent croissants readily available 😉

We made it into Pondicherry around mid-day and – after a great thali lunch – had some time for a self-guided / google-maps supported walk around town … a more proper tour was given in the evening … before we made it to a pre-dinner drink and a fairly French influenced dinner.

Auroville

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On the way to Pondicherry we had a stop at Auroville – and probably one of the odder places on the whole trip.

The community of Auroville was originally founded by the Mother back in the late 1960s, the community is dedicated to peace, equality, generosity, goodness, courage, progress, receptivity, aspiration, persistence, gratitude, humility and sincerity – plus above all the ‘divine consciousness’.

All is supposedly non-religious and even free of religion – to me however it felt pretty much like a religion in itself – with its own value- and belief system.

Check wikipedia and auroville.org for more information.