We divided our trip into 2 parts because we wanted to explore not only the chaotic and “dirty” North but also wanted to enjoy the tropical weather in the South.
So this part of my diary tells stories from the south. Here I marked places that we visited:
To be honest we expected the South to be way more tropical but we didn’t do much planning and that’s why we didn’t count on the relatively low temperatures in the mountainous areas. In order to manage the North and the South, it was necessary to take a flight. One could also travel by train and buses ( which would be definitely an unforgettable experience) but it would take days and would be way less comfortable. We took flight from the holy city Varanasi to Bengaluru (which is the IT center of India – not really much to see there but if you are an entrepreneur or love IT than this is the city in India where you should appear).
We took a direct bus directly from Bengaluru to Mysore (for which gave us recommendation one Indian guy in the airplane). It took about 5 hours to reach Mysore. We immediately felt the difference between the North and the South. Everything was calmer and we didn’t have problem to cross the street, people drove cars and tuk-tuks pretty orderly and we just felt like coming back (kind of ) to the normality.
The shops were closing around 10 p.m. and we had the feeling that people looked more beautiful ( which is completely SUBJECTIVE opinion hahah).
The next day I felt kind of weird sick. I did my yoga routine anyway and after that, we went out to eat breakfast. In the South they mostly eat dosa or idly (more about the food in my foodie article here). I couldn’t eat much and felt even worse after that. We went for a short walk but my energy was comparable to the energy which you have after dancing 20 hours at some rave party. I went to some bank and asked if I could use their bathroom. There I spent a few minutes with really heavy vomiting and all the stuff around :D. We both with Daniel were in the beginning so happy that we didn’t have any digestion problems BUT it wouldn’t be real India if we didn’t get sick at least once during the trip.
So two days or three I spent mostly going on the toilet or wherever it was possible and didn’t eat much. I couldn’t even think about those sauces and all not-dry-stuff that we ate before. Dry fruit and nuts were my best friends. We were pretty well stocked with the anti-diarrhea products but those from the Czech Republic didn’t work (at least for me) at all. So we bought some cheap pills from Indian pharmacy and it helped us immediately. It was maybe too heavy and worked “too much” but it was a blessing to be able to walk a few hours without searching for the closest place to use the bathroom or forest or whatever to fulfill our needs.
MYSORE
Because of the digestion problems we didn’t do much in Mysore. We met some tuk-tuk driver called “Master blaster” who was proud that some tourists uploaded videos of him on Youtube. He told us to show us some places in Mysore and said that he doesn’t want any money that he “only” likes tourists. Well, we didn’t give him, in the end, any extra money but it was just the typical “tour” through places that he had some kind of collaboration with. Super expensive essential oils, cigarettes and things like that. It was interesting but I was really happy that we didn’t purchase anything. It is always huge pressure and you almost feel guilty that you don’t buy anything but it’s important to think critically and ask yourself if you really need it or you just feel that you should buy something. After that, we wanted to visit the beautiful Mysore palace but came too late. So we saw it at least from outside. I wasn’t actually sad or something because I felt that it is OK to have one day off. In the evening we climbed up to the Chamundi hill and observed the sunset with some other Indian youngsters. On the top of the hill, we saw the Sri Chamundeshwari Devi Temple and ate some uncooked corn. So we rather threw it away.
In the morning we moved with an Indian travel agency bus to the Ooty. We booked “tour” but the tour guide wasn’t able to speak English (or actually didn’t want to speak English) so we didn’t enjoy being with a bunch of Indians taking pictures of every monkey around and waiting till they finish with their boat ride. Interesting was, that on the way there, we crossed the boarders to the Tamil Nadu state where is somehow forbidden to use plastics. The police came to our bus and controlled our bags. The control was not really strict but they kind of tried. In fact, we just hid our plastic bottle in our backpack and they didn’t check it properly so we didn’t have any problem. It didn’t look like a serious restriction. However, it was impossible to buy bottled water in the Tamil Nadu state.
OOTY
Ooty (Udhagamandalam) is a village (well Indian village which means almost 90 000 inhabitants 😀 ) is a place to which many Indian couples go for their honeymoon. It is pretty rushy in the city centre but takes only few minutes to go outside of the city and enjoy calm forests and routes. We stayed in the Abode Homestay which was for is maybe the most pleasant accommodation that we stayed in. Located on the hill, right next to the tea museum it offered us a calm stay an uninterrupted sleep. The water was (finally!!!) warm and the owner was super nice. At the very first day we visited some new local church and ate some rice with egg and meat (first meat in India!). One old woman really wanted to give me the food so she took me to the front and gave me the food immediately. It made me bit ashamed and I felt sorry for other people who needed to wait but they didn’t seem angry at all. They rather felt happy to see a foreign girl and asked again the same questions like “How are you? What’s your name? Where do you come from?”. People in the South eat with hands. So we did as well. It felt a bit unusual to eat rice with sauce with hands but we made it.
The next day we went to the Doddabetta peak to see the sunrise (which we didn’t manage) since it was really hard to get out from the warm bed. We went by walking but really soon realized that it was officially forbidden to walk in that area. Some guys on scooters told us to take a bus but we didn’t listen to them and hiked anyway. They said that it is forbidden to walk there because of wild animals but I think that the real reason is that they want to protect the environment and appears to be really hard in India for people to not throw plastic bottles and packages everywhere they go ( I don’t want to generalize but we saw many many cases of this behavior). We did the right decision with the early visit because apparently the hill is very crowded when you come in the afternoon. In the afternoon we took a bus and visited Pykara Lake and Pykara waterfalls. Next to the Pykara lake some policeman came to us and told us that it is not possible to walk there. Apparently it is not possible to walk anywhere in that area without being on the official road. The Pykara Waterfalls were nice but again surrounded by a fence so it lost a bit the sense of being in nature and enjoying it. And of course, the place was full of tourists (Indian tourists – we actually didn’t meet many “white” tourists, when we were in some tourist place than we met mostly Indian tourists) taking selfies. There were also young guys who took pictures of people for money. We met guys like this in many places. On the way back we hitchhiked and enjoyed the ride in a normal car which was not shaking all the time like all those crazy buses.
COONOOR
Coonoor is a town situated 18 km from Ooty and is easily reachable. From Coonoor, we took a tuk-tuk to the Dolphin’s Nose viewpoint which was really wonderful. We caught it pretty empty and could enjoy the beautiful view of the tea plantages, rocks, and foggy valley. We decided to go back to Coonoor by walk (about 14 km) and stopped at the Lamb’s rock which offered us also an amazing view. We were both pretty exhausted from diarrhea so we didn’t eat the whole day and just bought some chocolate ( even me – for those who don’t know me – I NEVER eat chocolate and any sweets just like that). Our plan was to go back by train but it was already left. We bought some fruits, had soya sticks and tried to find some chapati which wasn’t successful since in the South they don’t really do chapati.
The only goal of the next day was to move from Ooty to Munnar. Munnar is situated 245 km from Ooty but according to Google it takes more than 6 hours to get there. At first, it seemed a lot to me but I didn’t know what was waiting for us. We traveled for 15 hours and needed to change the buses 4 times. The guy from our accommodation in Ooty recommended us to take a bus to a different city that we planned to but it occurred to be pretty unlucky for us. But we took it easy and actually enjoyed being lazy.
MUNNAR
Munnar is a wonderful place if you want to let yourself be surrounded by tea plantages and nothing around. Munnar was pretty touristic ( and now I mean non-Indian tourists). I realized that I pretty enjoyed being the only white person for kilometers and didn’t like that much in Munnar to meet people from Europe, America, and Australia. But of course, I didn’t mind or something, I just didn’t find it that cool anymore (if that makes sense haha).
In the morning we went to the city to have some breakfast and were hopelessly searching for some place where they would serve coffee. We didn’t find anything so we just sat at some random café and asked for two fresh juices. It took them 40 minutes to understand and buy ingredients for it and finally do it for us. Normally I would be already nervous and feel like that I am loosing my time but India somehow makes you feel easy and not to care much. After our “breakfast” we hired some tuk-tuk driver and he took us on some typical tour to some touristic places. It was actually very funny to observe what Indian people find extraordinary and cool (and want money for it). For example “echo point” which was just some place where one could only hear echo of the voice. Something completely normal in the nature but extraordinary for Indian people. We also saw a few couples posing romantically in front of a few hired cameras and making some cool videos and pictures of them.
The next day we went for a hike and it was really really hot. On the way back we stopped at some small shop where some woman was selling typical “MAGGI” and omelet. We ordered basically everything that she had and I think that she was very happy about it since she was already ready to close the shop so we definitely made with our purchase her day better. We had dinner at some place close to our hotel. Daniel ate noodles (which was the only thing that he was able to digest at that moment) and I had some weird yogurt rice and an egg omelet.
KOCHI
We arrived to Kochi right in the early afternoon and took a boat to get to our accommodation. It was clear to us from the very first moment that Kochi is a place with not many things to see and that we want to get out of there. Kochi is very expensive (food in restaurants costs 10x more than in the North of India!), the place is very tourist-oriented and there are no attractive things to do. We ate some expensive fish curry and borrowed 2 scooters. For me, it was the first driving of scooter in my life but I learned it pretty easily ( yes it IS actually EASY).
ALAPPUZHA
We woke up the next they at 5:30 a.m. and drove on our scooters directly to Alappuzha. We took the coastal road which offered us wonderful views of the tropical area around and also for me some stressful moments when I had a small crash with a local bus. The road was really tiny and bus drivers didn’t really care much about lonely young European ladies on scooters. I felt really happy at that day because everything was just perfect. People, setting, weather, surrounding. We arrived to our accommodation in Alappuzha at around 10 a.m. The place looked really nice and I was happy that we gave a chance to accommodation that doesn’t have many reviews ( only about 14 ). Sometimes I think that the accommodation needs to have many reviews in order to be validly good but the opposite is probably in many cases the truth. The owner of the homestay was super nice and offered us beers in the evening and we had really nice chat with him and his cousin.
Alappuzha (for most Indians still Alleppey) is a city (or rather district) in Kerala which is famous for its backwaters and houseboats. It is less known for its coir industry. However, when you focus on the usage of coir you will see it nearly everywhere you look. We visited the coir museum and it was for both of us very informative. I am not saying entertaining but rather informative :D. Allepey is often called because of its modest grid of canals the “Venice of the East”. And I cannot disagree. The backwaters are really wonderful. We decided not to hire any touristic houseboat and went with a normal public transport boat to Kottayam. We didn’t get there because our boat got broken. Actually we didn’t mind that much because we started to be a little bit bored after 2 hours of sitting in the boat. At some point, the boat completely stopped and anchored. Suddenly, another boat came to help and offered to us to take us back to Alappuzha. I felt really lucky at that moment because I couldn’t imagine spending another 2 hours on that boat. We needed to change those boats there and back 3 times because those confused Indians didn’t really know what is correct and asked us always to go here and there. It was fun.
We discovered a really cool beach close to Alappuzha which was clean and completely empty. The ocean had 30 °C and we were not surrounded by plastic bottles while swimming #success. One family lived on that beach and gave us coconuts for free when some guy was picking them from the tree for them. One evening we came to the main Alappuzha beach which was huge but full of people. But it has its own atmosphere. We also found some “hipster” bar there (what? Is it even possible to use the word “hipster” in India?) and drank 4 teas or some kind of beverages that looked like a mix between milk, tea, and coffee.
One interesting thing that happened to us in Alappuzha was when we wanted to catch the sunrise and discover new beaches to bath. We came to some beach and one young guy told us that it is a dirty beach and that we should go swimming there. We didn’t pay attention to him and continue walking. On the beach, I saw some old guy squatting on the sand and smoking cigarettes. I found it very cool and wanted to take a picture of him. Suddenly while coming closer, I saw that he was making a poop. I didn’t know what to think and went further. On literally every step I saw poo. Hm. So we decided to come back and tried to delete it from our minds. Unsuccessfully. Somehow I also felt that we were not “allowed” to go there. I felt that we were disturbing a bit that kind of intimate moments of those guys. But it was cool how he was smoking, observing the sea and pooping at the same time. Perfect setting.
And this is pretty much everything I wanted to share about my experience from traveling through south India.
SEE YOU SOON and NAMASTE!