the road to tea

by karinella | Jul 23, 2013 | yoga

Part of this blog will be dedicated to adventures. Yoga can be an adventure, a journey within. And sometimes the way to go in is to go out,  further than you’ve ever been.
This is a tale from the road in India, written at a tea house in Fort Kochi, Kerala. I later changed my return ticket – twice – and ended up in Nepal, where I stayed in an ashram and underwent yoga teacher training.

Winter in Oslo is soggy, drafty, pitch black and somewhat aesthetically East Block. And it’s just so darn long! It’s the time of year when I feel the travel bug tickling me the hardest. I’ve always wanted to go to India. It’s one of those secret dreams of mine (but maybe not-really-so-very-secret-after-all, since I’m not exactly the silent type). Working through Christmas (sorry mom) and deciding to postpone that awfully expensive driver’s license (which I probably wouldn’t have been able to afford and/or failed getting anyway) was indeed worth it. I have freckles on my nose, a swing in my step (narrowly avoiding getting my hips trimmed by the kamikaze rickshaws) and a head so full of impressions it feels like it just might explode on a regular basis. India is just so much. Of everything.

My original plan was to spend a month in a yoga ashram at a teacher training course. Alas, my rather assymetrical spine and general clumsiness rendered my back kaputt, so I had to delay my departure and missed the course I was intending to join. That’s ok, I take things as they come. So far I’ve done more splashing in the waves and sipping of green coconuts than yoga studies. In other words, more mm than om. But I do lug around a yoga mat that is my friend in the sore mornings, when my back creaks like an old house. And I did spend the first two weeks getting ayurvedic treatments and private yoga lessons (from the amazing Arun, who is now my friend) in Varkala, a ridiculously beautiful temple village cum resort with red cliffs dropping dramatically down to a long, long beach.  I can think of worse things than sitting on the edge of the cliff at night, munching biryani, looking at the Arabian Sea with dozens of lights glinting on the horizon. Nope, not the lights of Africa, but a floating village of fishing boats out for the catch of the night. The boys on the shore also try their fishing techniques, tempted by the abundance of scantily clad western girls, most of which are not so easily ensnared.

My Varkala is a place of friendships, of pineapple pancakes, good coffee and masala dosa, of getting used to the heat and the emotional blackmail that follow tourists everywhere (“please,  my friend, just help me make small business. Not many people come in my shop. Pleeease?” *sad eyes* – not trying to be judgemental here, it’s just the reality of India) and of La Mer, La Mort et L’Amour, or ponderings thereof. After all, I’ve crossed a whole lot of water to get here, and I’d like to indulge in my search for meaning while I’m at it, thankyouverymuch.

But I eventually tore my gaze from the horizon and got on a train and ventured into the real India, the India of noise, dust, poverty, chai and wonderful rice meals served on banana leaves in rickety shacks on every street corner. South Indian breakfasts are like no other. Dosa, idly, appam … Exotic names that all pretty much make me think ‘nom’. Being a natural born breakfaster, I am pondering the idea of starting my very own kind of breakfast club, starring the morning fare from all over the globe. Which implies that I will just have to go to Thailand and Mexico and Japan and any other place that has … well, breakfast. Any country that doesn’t isn’t really worth visiting in the first place. You might ask what I was doing in France for four years. Well, a croissant and café crème may not be much, but if it’s done right and comes with a view, it can be quite outstanding. And if you sleep in, there’s always brunch.

I could always narrow it down to breakfast and tea (referring to the actual beverage, not the meal that just might include potatoes). Tea is important. Tea is good. Tea rocks. Lucky me, I have wandered around in the midst of it. Tales of tea will follow, after a short detour down to the southernmost point of this vast and fascinating subcontinent, that is. In Kanyakumari, where the Arabian Sea meets the Indian Ocean meets the Bay of Bengal, the horizon might give valley people a headache or sense of vertigo. I felt right at home, and found my way to some strangely abandoned rocks on the seashore (well, there was a wall to climb, but me and my mischevious travel buddy saw no reason not to).  The sunset is supposed to be spectacular and we got settled in time for the show with a bottle of fresh pineapple juice, giggled and waited. Alas, the fog was stalking us, ambushed and greedily swallowed the sun. The only sensible, Norwegian thing to do was to stubbornly stay put anyway, hoping that tide, slippery rocks and thorny greenery would not hamper the return to civilization. No problem (words to be imagined with a sidewards nod/jiggle). And absolutely worth it. The view of the dark ocean, the stars and the gigantesque statue I thought was of Vivekananda, the wandering monk who used to swim out to the tiny island at the tip of India to meditate, but that turned out to be of Thiruvalluvar, a Tamil poet and saint, well, it was magnificent.

Though the sacredness of this southernmost cape is the main reason hordes of Indian middle class tourists go to Kanyakumari (in addition to getting their names written on grains of rice), I found my peace in the little fishing village surrounding a blindingly white orthodox church. Tiny houses in purple, orange and turquoise hugging narrow alleyways leading down to the beach, where brightly painted fishing boats lay resting while the fishermen were mending the nets for yet another night on the waves. The waves that bring both silvery, flapping life to sustain the village, and that caused devastation here not long ago. A green boat with “tsunami relief project” in faded letters along the side, a few buildings covered in scaffolds and Salvation Army symbols by the doors of restored houses are reminders of what happened here. The tsunami claimed over a thousand lives in just this little village. It’s not the most impressing number in the horrid statistics of Christmas 2005, but on the way back I witnessed something that made it come all the more alive. The air suddenly trembled with voices. Arms. Screams. A woman ran out of an alley with a limp child on her arm. Hailed a motorbike. Took off in a cloud. A mother came running shortly after, but too late to be the one carrying her child to the hospital. She just kept walking in the middle of the road, blind, her wails penetrating dust and bones. Some men nearby explained it very simply. Accident, they said. Water. A chill crept out from the dark corners of the world that not even the blazing sun could chase away.

Tea? Yes, I’ll get to that. Took the train (oh, sweet train! Riding Sleeper Class is an amazing experience worth its own tale) to Madurai, saw a big temple (holy mackerel, we’re talking enormous!), ate good dosa, went to a space bar (literally – it looked like the set of a sci-fi series from the sixties) and snuck out of the hotel through a restaurant, making a narrow escape from paying an extra night due to rather unreasonable check-out times. Then off again, back on the road and up, up, up, into the mountains. To Ooty, which is a place of tea, but for me more a place of female hormones gone haywire, chocolate (and cravings thereof), mystery buses that never show up, traffic, nocturnal rats serenading me from underneath the bed and the relief of rain drumming on the the tin roof of the tiny steam train snaking it’s way down the narrow hillsides past stations with gracious names such as Lovedale and Wellington to Coonoor. Coonoor is a place to get on and off buses. This proves quite impossible at times, since a whole lot of people do just that. Luckily, even the most stubborn girls give in to the Indian crowds. Luckily because Coonoor turned out to be more than a bus stop. Sometimes a clean room, tasty meal, hot water from a bucket and nice view of landslides is all it takes to retrieve the energy needed to embark on a long day of hot, bumpy bus rides without going mental.

The bus not only bumped, but also did a lot of swaying. Oh my, the thrill of riding buses up and down mountains! I wasn’t sure whether to laugh or yelp as the driver put all his weight on the steering wheel to make the hairpin turns. But of course we all got there in one piece. Each. I have absolutely no idea how, but the insanity of Indian traffic somehow works. The horn is the main thing to learn how to use, that much I’ve gathered. Honk, or you’re pudding. Literally.

Oh, tea! I landed right in the midst of it high up in the mountains, in Munnar. Just a short walk out of town, and it’s all there: Immaculate plantations so impossibly green it’s hard to fathom, smiling women picking and carrying great bags of the wonder leaves on their heads, bright yellow tractors bringing them down to the factories.  And the scent of fresh tea in the air … Yum. Something that struck me about Munnar was how the society seemed to be so well functioning and life a breeze compared to the noise, dust and poverty of the cities. No beggars in sight. And the tea workers all lived in cozy, blue houses with fruit gardens and a couple of goats out back. Too good to be true? Maybe. Communist flags competed with Tamil party symbols and there was a rally of some kind. Then a strike. And not just any old strike. Walking out into the street in the morning was like stepping into some post-apocalyptic western movie (Bollywood version). The lively bazaar was all of a sudden a ghost town. No crowds, no lime juice, no rickshaws and no horns honking. Everything was quiet. Until someone brought out the chai. There’s chai enough for all. Fact is, the plantations are now 70% owned by the worker co-ops and at the moment it seems like everyone gets their share. I hope my sunshine version of British tea empire meets socialist reform is not a complete illusion.

One thing is certain: the tea is good. So here I am, sipping the golden beverage at The Teapot in Fort Kochi, a beautiful port town whose heritage comes from the days of the Dutch East India Company, as well as Portuguese, Jewish and Chinese settlement. It’s one of those places that reminds you that India is not just one country with one people. It’s truly a subcontinent and a cultural melting pot.

Talking of pots, I think it’s time to order another one.