The Taj (not the Mahal)

So yeah, no the big white building but the Taj Hotel in Kumarakom.

Before I get into that, did you know Hindi has about 58 letters in their alphabet? What does this mean for us, well glad you asked.  I had a chat to our guide in Cochin and basically asked that as Hindi has more letters and therefore the language would be more expressive and nuanced that our 26 letter english our jokes must seem to the average Hindi speaker like a 4 year olds knock knock joke.

To which he replied "yes".

So we woke up at the Trident slightly hungover and well shocked at the drinks bill, yep, bigger than the accommodation bill.  Then went to breakfast to await our driver to The Taj who was going to arrive at 12, it was currently 9.30.  

Coffee poured we were dutifully informed our driver had arrived.

Off we go through peak hour traffic then through backroad villages on to our destination.  Scary?  Not so much, if it's one thing an Indian driver has mastered it's brake application.  If I had acquired such skills at an early age everyone wouldn't be talking about Mr Webber leaving F1 to retire but Mr Villis.

Our driver, again a lovely fellow, had very limited english but his tourist guide script was delivered sincerely and earnestly.  His script was punctuated with Heathers spiritually biased interpretations of what was being said so that "and here is cinnamon and palm oil plan..." was interrupted with "you mean the oil they drip on the third eye! yeah that's amazing!" "...tations, and here is really good for fishing".

Imagine if you will two people on the same stage reading dialogue from different plays taking it in turns sentence by sentence.  Doesn't really make sense even though it sounds like it should and is as funny as anything from Python.  Gold.  Or should I say Halibut.

Remind me I need to look up the cost of importing a Morris Ambassador, actually this is me talking to me for when I get home otherwise I'll forget.

The drive was amazing not just for the braking skills previously mentioned but as a nice view from metropolitan to village vistas.  One thing all demographics have in common is that every flat surface from walls to house fronts had some form of advertising on it and almost every yard had their own billboard prominently displaying, well mostly vodafone.  I took a slightly interesting video which I'll attempt to load here later.

Fresh coconut water is awesome and costs 50c, fresh coconut flesh is included and is also awesome. Suck on that hipsters!

The Taj has turned out to be amazing and the canals and land it's all built on are by design and took a couple of thousand years to make, by hand.  The scale of time and the area is almost too much to take in.

On arrival we were greeted with a welcome drink of ...fresh coconut.  At least it was the yellow coconut which is much sweeter and they're smaller so we didn't have to insult anyone by not finishing them.

That evening we went on a sunset cruise of the lake where I learned the history I just imparted above from the Activities Director.  Yes, Activities Director and he is everything you are probably imagining right down to the shiny navy blue track pants and the shear earnestness with which he takes his job.  I'm going to say he's a funny little man but that would be charicaturing him, he's a lot more than that, what he doesn't know about the district and it's history you could put on the head of a pin, and the pride he takes in his job shows enormously.  He's being filed away in my Very Nice Person file, along with pretty much everyone I've met here so far :)

Today, finally I'm up to date, just did a cooking course on kerala cuisine which was great.  Had a good chat to the chef, as you do when your a wanker who thinks he can cook, and got a few extra tips :)  Had a good chat to a guy from Madras who after enquiring about my trip informed me that Madras is actually Chennai, our next destination.   He was nice about it but not so nice about the cricket to the english people we'd met who were also attending, I'm sensing a bit of enmity there.  I didn't have the heart to tell anyone I didn't know anything about cricket nor did I care so much.  Hey, 12 years in government has stood me in good stead for faking it :)

Looking forward to showing off a bit when I get home.  The cooking not the faking it.

This evening we're off on a canal cruise, the indian version of venice gondolas which is why I'm writing this as I have some time to have a beer and catch up here.

Forgot to mention Fancyworld, the Home of Fancy Fittings and the fact we were invited to a birthday party where I had my first authentic chai.  I'm assuming authentic means not out of a packet.  Boy they like their sugar hit, nice hit but the comedown was nasty.

Tomorrow we're off on a house boat and after talking to people here about it, they're view is it's as boring as batshit after a couple of hours, and we're overnighting it.  So it may turn into a floating Thunderdome when two enter and only one leaves, which will be me, because I'm not the short dude who sits on master blasters shoulders.  Or maybe I'm master blaster whos shoulders Heather sits on.

Yeah, whatever.  Beer calls.

Either way you may read about it in the paper tomorrow.