Christmas in Kovalam, Kerala

Photos include:Road-side sugar cane juice. 6 Rupees & Delicious! ~ Santa-Fran post dip in the pool ~ Kanyakumari ~ Kovalam Beach on Christmas Day ~ The ocean front "view" from our hotel

T'was a bit of a challenge to get into the spirit of merry X-mas with 80-some degree weather and the waves of the Indian Ocean crashing outside. We've spent so too much time in a car this last week and have decided to make a slight change to the itinerary. We simply couldn't bear the thought of spending 8-9 hours in the car back to Kochi to get on a bus for 12 more hours back to Bangalore. So we're bailing on the bus tickets and staying put in Kovalam for 2 more days. Then we'll fly straight to Delhi (with a 7 hour stop at the Bangalore airport) for our final 2 days in India before the long long plane sojourn back to Sea-Town. Thus ends the bus & train portions of the migration. It's all airplanes and taxis from here.

On Christmas Eve we visited Kanyakumari - the southern most tip of India - where the nation begins and ends (depending on your perspective). Here the three seas meet - the Indian Ocean, the Bay of Bengal, & the Arabian Sea. We visited a temple where Swami Vivekananda spent 3 days meditating on a rock off the coast back in 1892. We tried to take a turn at meditating here ourselves. However, these novice meditators couldn't concentrate over the sounds of one small child with a whistle standing 6 feet behind us. What we thought was going to be an afternoon trip to Kanyakumari turned into an all-day journey of driving, driving, standing in line, being herded onto a boat and then more driving, driving through several Christmas Eve traffic jams.

The population of India is 2.3% Christian & pretty much all of them live in this southwestern state of Kerala. The Dutch & Portuguese colonized huge chunks of this part of India - savagely converting the local Hindus to Christianity hundreds of years ago. So on Christmas Eve the lights were up in true Griswold- Christmas style. At least we had something nice to look at while we sat in horrific traffic jams.

Turns out the choice to stay put for 2 days was wise. We took the DeMetros out for a parting dinner on Christmas night only to be poisoned by the tofu at Fusion Restaurant. Francis and I were awakened at 3am with a wretched bout of the sick. We spent the day in bed underneath the AC rumbling like a lawn mower - sleeping for some 17 hours and hoping that Shikha was doing somehow OK with their marathon car - then bus trip.

The new hotel has only one English language station - Russia TV - so that gives me more time to think rather than watch endless episodes of Win it in a Minute or How I Met Your Mother. So many people in India. Such scarcity of resources. This causes one of the biggest frustrations for visiting India - the constant competition and need to fight for everything. Nothing comes easy here - you have to shout, draw attention, sometimes bully your way. And yet it doesn't cause tension for the Indians - just for us Westerners - leaving us sweaty, bewildered, and defeated at times. But it also leaves me grateful - with an awareness of the privilege that comes with my light skin and American passport. I think the thing I most take for granted is the quiet back home. So many people and so much competition makes for lots and lots of noise. If you're lucky enough to find a hotel away from the band saws and Muslims waking for 4am prayers then you probably have a rooster relentlessly crowing just outside your window or an ancient air conditioner shucking and jiving in a labored effort to spit out some cool.

I think we're ready to head home where life is just that much easier. And hopefully I won't forget to put my daily frustrations into perspective. I may do one final post from the (hopefully) posh boutique hotel we've booked in Delhi.