The Road to Cochin

I managed about 4 hours sleep and got up bright and early, I was going to be picked up at 7am.

Sunrise

However, the Indians are a bit like the Bajans, time-keeping is not their best asset. No show by 7.40am so I phoned the driver. God knows what my mobile phone bill will be like! He said he was 2km away. Half an hour later, he arrived but wanted to wash the car and himself and said he would be half an hour. OK, no problem. It had been very cold when I got up but the sun had come up now and was warming up nicely so I just sat in the sun and chatted to Tina, one of the girls there. I had been worried that my negativity might have rubbed off on the others but everyone else appears to be much stronger than me. She did say that someone had been there with a bad bag and brought their own mattress. Now why didn’t I think of that!

At 9am. we were ready to go. The car boot was open and my suitcase wasn’t in it. I looked inside at reception where it had been left 2 hours previously and it wasn’t there either. Oh brilliant, the driver of the car taking 2 of the guests back to Kozhikode had loaded my suitcase into their car. Why do these things happen to me? Everyone kept saying “Don’t worry, going same way” I had no idea that Kozhikode was on the way to Cochin and we could rendez vous there but if I had known this, the driver could have picked me up in Kozhikode and I could have saved myself 60 Euros. This is what happens when you have no internet access!

My driver was called Saynu. The road that was closed for resurfacing 2 days previously was open so we avoided the off road adventure. However the resurfacing was just a bunch of people throwing rocks onto the area you would call a road. The first 20 minutes of the journey were still bloody awful but then it got better. Saynu was a nice man and he asked within 10 minutes if I wanted to go to his house for lunch, his wife was cooking. I said “Absolutely!” wanting to eat proper Indian food after the muck I had had for 2 days.

Saynu’s driving was not as mad as the previous driver’s but he was always in a gear or 2 too high and hadn’t mastered the technique of dropping a gear when over-taking. He would stay in 5^th gear at 50 km/h while trying to overtake a truck doing 45 km/h. Many times he had to drop back again and this was hairiness of a different type.

We went and picked up my suitcase at an arranged location, they were right, I didn’t need to worry. The road and traffic from Kozhikode to Palakkad was pretty good apart from a few really mad bus drivers and obviously one tuk tuk transporter because we passed it, lying on it’s side having shed brand new shiny tuk tuks all over the road.

The names of places we drove through sounded more Sri Lankan than Indian, towns like Panangangara, Padinhattumuri, Malappuram and Perinthalmanna . At 2.30pm, we drove into Mannarkkad, Saynu’s home city, which is located on the edge of the Silent Valley National Park.

Saynu, my driver with his wife Salina and daughter, Suhanna

We arrived at his small house which he said he rented for 2,500 Rupees per month, that’s just 40 Euros. I didn’t look  around, I just took a seat in the living room which was typically Indian. One table and 4 plastic chairs, a TV (on Discovery Channel – The Deadliest Catch would you believe!) and nothing else. Salina, Saynu’s wife served up a beautiful vegetable biryani with a gobi (cauliflower) dish and date pickle -  delicious. I drank a freshly made fruit drink which I think was grape and apple which was like nothing I have ever tasted before, in a good way! I couldn’t eat the whole of my one big plate of food but Saynu managed to get through 3 plates, and he was eating with his hand while I was shovelling it in with a spoon. Then ice cream, fresh pineapple and grapes arrived but I was already full. In my stuttering Malayalam, I said “I’m very sorry, I am full, I can’t eat any more” Actually, I said it in English but with a great local accent. With a doggy bag of the fruit, we were soon back on our way.

The scenery was lovely with mountains in the distance to our left and palm trees and paddy fields in the foreground. Just a shame about the traffic which got heavier and heavier. After stopping for petrol at 5.30pm (which I had to pay for because Saynu’s card didn’t work), I had a bit of a snooze and before I knew it, it was dark and we were outside my hotel in Cochin which had been booked for me, Dream Hotel. I received a VIP welcome for some reason. Sanoj from Travelogics was also there to meet me and tell me “everything had been taken care of” and just go and relax, so I did.