I'm in Goa at present and staying at a simply fabulous resort called Coconut Creek Resort. It's absolutely wonderful - little houses built around lovely gardens and a huge pool.
Mumsy and Roslyn meet the elephants
It is right next to a very nice beach with lovely clean white sand. That is quite something as elsewhere I've noticed that the sand is rather muddy and black in appearance. It also has a restaurant for cheap eats on the beach and a fairly delicious meal can be acquired for about $5 and a cocktail costs about 150 rupees which is about $4. In fact there are the same English couples coming to this resort every year. And why not?
The food is cheap and delicious, the weather is superb, there is cable TV in each room and you can get a beauty treatment or massage for about $10!
I was amused by the laid back attitude to dogs here. A restaurant has tables on the sand of the beach and a couple of well fed dogs congregate there every night. One dog plopped itself on the sand between two tables and promptly went to sleep. The waiters were not at all phased and in fact walked around the dog or stepped over it! Dog lovers everywhere would applaud.
However, on a more sinister doggie note, I was told by our Goan tour guide that a senior tour guide and his driver had in the very week before, both been bitten by a rabid dog. Vaccine had to be flown in from interstate and the timing of this is critical. It has to come in within a certain number of hours and in their case it was 2 hours late arriving. They were waiting to see if the vaccine wassuccessful because if it's not, he will have to be given a fatal injection (says the tour guide!) as he would become rabid himself and incurable. How ghastly!So I gave dogs a wide berth after that timely warning.
We went on a sunset cruise on the harbour of Cochin and this was absolutely a riot.
The boat was jam packed with tourists - mostly a lot of young men from the Middle East and India. Anyway, there was a resident DJ on board who was playing ear splitting music complilations. The program included a dance display by 4 Goan dancers who performed traditional folk dances based on the Portuguese style. After their performance the MC asked all the children on board to come up and dance on the stage. This was followed by all the couples dancing. Then he asked the men to come up. There was an almighty yell and literally dozens of fellows stamped from all quarters onto the stage. Here they threw their arms in the air and all gyrated and pounded around the stage in the most amazing spectacle I have ever seen. This lasted for a good 20 mins and they weren't the least bit embarrassed about their performance.
The men get down and boogie
Can you imagine that happening in Australia outside a gay club? Not very likely! Yet I doubt these men were at all gay - only deliriously happy! Furthermore, I'd have to say they were simply dancing for the pleasure of dancing rather than doing a routine to attract the ladies on the boat.
By contrast, later, when the ladies were asked to come up on stage to dance, about 8 shy girls walked up and very self consciously moved from side to side. It was certainly an interesting cultural experience!
Whilst on the subject of men and women in India, did you know that most of them have arranged marriages still? Although I met lots of people who professed to be Christians, they too said they had arranged marriages.
All single people lived at home with their parents unless they were working a long distance away where the hotel for example, would arrange a room for them. Then the parents would advertise or ask around for someone of similar background to marry their son or daughter. The Hindus get astrological charts drawn up by the priest at the temple. These charts compare the astrological transits of the two parties and the wedding would only take place if they were compatible. I believe the man gets a chance to meet a number of potential partners and can veto one he doesn't much care for. Still, the girl has to come up with a dowry which can make the whole business a bit expensive. Afterwards they go to live with the husband's parents. There are a lot of elements here that I see causing quite a few potential problems but in actual fact all the people I spoke to were extremely happy with their spouses and went out of their way to spend time with them and make them happy.
I was also surprised to see that 90% of families in Kerala and Goa had 2 children - amazingly usually a boy and a girl. Don't know how they organised that. It was rare to see two boys or two girls in one family.
Unless you want to upgrade to a car, a small family is better!
Our driver glibbly said, "A small family is a happy family!" I got the impression he'd learned this from school. So rest assured that Indians aren't all producing families of 15 boys as I think they might have in the past.
Like everyone in the west, they realize that a family is an expensive proposition these days - especially when education comes into the equation. And Kerala and Goan people seem to be all very well educated. When anyone wrote a note for me in English, they wrote it beautifully and with no spelling mistakes. This, espite the fact that the language that Kerala people speak is Malayalum (hope I spelt this correctly). This is quite different from Hindi and sounds like a tongue rolling an 'r' continuously.
The written language apparently has about 56 characters and they are all twisted and circular. It looks very difficult to me! I was told that employment opportunities for graduates in Kerala and Goa are very limited and thus, 50% of the working population are working in the Middle East or in South Africa.
That sounds very easy except that the cost of the working visa to go to these lands is extremely expensive. I heard a figure like 100,000 rupees for the Middle East. And then a tour guide told me that he'd actually worked in the Middle East when he was much younger and he'd received nothing like the money he'd been promised and in fact was so badly treated by the locals working there, that he'd be frightened for his life.
He only escaped with his life because he went on a hunger strike and proved so problematical for them that they shipped him home.
How to carry an elephant!
Oops, forgot to mention the elephants in India.
If you are a person of means, but by no means king of the world, you might like to invest in an Indian elephant!
Roslyn meets Kosomin
In our travels we met Kosomin, the most famous elephant in India.
He cost a bomb and he has 3 mahoots (handlers) but he certainly earns his keep. He is hired out to various temples around the state of Kerala for religious celebrations and he earns 100,000 rupees a day.
We saw him at one temple, together with another 5 or so elephants who had also been hired and they all seemed to be having a great time, stripping leaves off coconut trees for their lunch and having long baths where they laid on the ground as the mahoots clambered over them, washing them with a hose and scrubbing them with coconut shells. On the orders of their mahoots they would move a leg into place or turn over so that another part could be accessed. Then up they jumped and lumbered off to the temple for a full make up and ceremonial costume fitting.
Look what is coming down the road!
No ceremony at a Hindu temple is complete without an elephant and they certainly draw in the crowds. Just like us, dozens of locals just stood staring as Kosomin undertook his ablutions.
I think we could have stayed glued to the spot watching forever as he lifted a well manicured foot and then another for a scrub between his toes. At reserves where they allow tourists to ride the elephants, the elephants live a somewhat similar life. They give bathing displays in a giant bathing area and they finish off their bath, not with a hose, but with a spectacular display of showering themselves from their own trunks.
Tourists can feed them bananas and little pumpkins which they make quick work of. The only thing which I found unfortunate and which I had read about, was that young elephants are tethered for the whole day to one spot for many years. This instils in them the thought that they have very narrow boundaries and hence they are easier to handle and not likely to wander off into the jungle like a wild elephant might.
Although they apparently go for a walk in the morning with their trainers, the rest of the day must be horrid for them being tethered to the one spot till they're five years old. I saw one little baby swaying back and forth on the spot and my heart went out to him.
Poor little elephant learning the ropes!
Still, their lot might be much better than the working elephants that have to shift tonnes of timber on logging sites. Carrying around tourists and having baths for the camera sound pretty easy in comparison. On the other hand, they could also be free.
Elephant carrying his lunch
There is still some jungle left and wildlife reserves where families of elephants roam freely.
While we were staying at Moonah in the Highlands where the tea is grown in Kerala, a young waiter told me that he was nervous about going home that night as the previous night a wild elephant had been spotted on the very road where he rides home.
I couldn't imagine that it would find anything to eat in a tea plantation and he said that it would usually find a farmer's garden and rip up all the vegies. I then worried that farmers might take revenge but he assured me that all wild life is protected in India now and that it is against the law to harm a wild animal.
Certainly, signs along the road said, "Do not scare the wildlife". And there are heavy fines for hitting monkeys with your car and I must confess, that unlike Australia, where a drive in the countryside in any state is a horror trip due to the huge numbers of dead kangaroos, wombats and even koalas on the road, in India I never once saw a dead animal on the street.
I saw heaps of dogs just sitting or lying on the side of the road - which, given the volume of vehicles of all sorts from bikes to motor rickshaws right up to lorries, was the best possible move they could make.
I saw cows and water buffalos even, plodding along or tethered at the side of the road, and I particularly saw hundreds of goats wandering freely around most places, but they always managed to avoid being hit by a car. Very amazing!
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