We arrive late in the old colonial enclave of Fort Kochi. We are now seasoned travellers. We will not accept sub-standard accommodation, when we know we will find better around the corner with just a little more time and effort. The Wife is tired and we leave her with the bags while the three of us go and look for a new home for a few days. She only has one pre-requisite, ‘Make sure there are no mosquitos in the room.’ She reacts very badly to insect bites, her skin breaks into mini inverted angry volcanic cones. The first damp wooden guesthouse looks like a breeding cage for vector malaria carriers. The boy simple says, ‘no thanks’, seconded by the girl. The guesthouse owner looks at them and then me, as if I have two very well trained monkeys to do my bidding. The second place is slightly better, it would have done me, but I would be in a very small minority. The final place we find, after being scooted about by a commission induced tut-tut driver is like a newly built palace, as well as all the usual defences to keep bugs out, it has cable tv. The wife is impressed, it has gone one in the morning now.

Fort Kochi like many parts of India is a magical place, the old Portuguese seaward port with its wooden porches and balcony frontages are juxtaposed against the modern hubbub of Ernakulam and Wellington Harbour. The pace of life drops and you feel you can exhale and relax, whilst stepping back in time.

The next day we take a boat tour around the Wellington Harbour in the hyacinth infested waters, so thick you feel you can walk on the carpet of hypnotic ebbing and flowing vegetation. This highly invasive plant species, which originates in the Amazon basin is a global nuisance. In this case it is the British Colonials to blame. If you are caught even thinking about it in New Zealand you are sentenced to be an extra on a Peter Jackson film for the rest of your life. In Kerala it clogs the nets of fisherman and the beaches. It is a clear reminder not to put organisms were nature has not evolved them to be. When I was in Queensland, Australia, I asked a local to find and show me a cane toad for the very same reason. ‘Are you takin’ this piss, mate?’he succinctly asked. I wasn’t.

The reason we are in Kochi is do the beautiful meditative backwaters. The wife has been many years before, and now she wants us to experience it as a family. It is verdantly tranquil; tiffin off a banana leaf, birds, snakes. The only negative – a bloated dead dog we happen across when punting in a tributary. This sort of sums India up, no one wants to take responsibility for clearing it up, even though many tourists will see it and it will upset them. No one in the area seems to care that it reflects badly on them. It is the same with rubbish, no one wants to take responsibility. It makes you appreciate having such services in our western worlds. The train stations used to serve chai in clay cups, you threw them on the floor, and they biodegraded very slowly, hopefully to be eventually shovelled up and composted back into the land. These have been replaced by plastic and polystyrene, biodegradations enemy. Rats of the near future will be making dwellings from these.

The next day we are up early to visit the Konadad Elephant Sanctuary. We are getting to the stage now, were we have probably seen enough elephants, but this sanctuary offers the chance to wash the elephants in the shallows of Periyar River. There are some images, no matter how much your brain deteriorates you will never forget. The children washing a baby elephant, while its mother watches on contently is one. Encouraged by the keepers to rub harder with coconut husks. It is life affirming, we know we are merely tourists, but some events are so wonderful you have to get involved and beam. The photograph is on the bookcase, and of all the art in our house it is the one image that draws most attention. The day is brightened further for the keepers when my son takes what he thinks is a small concrete step down into the murky river water to completely submerge. It is only funny if you are watching what appears to be a Norman Wisdom impression. I pull him out laughing, told be told quite angrily, ‘It’s not funny.’’It is from up here.’ The laughter of the natives only partly reassures him in retrospect it may well be.

Have you ever ridden bareback on an elephant?? – Don’t! The hair of this particular pachyderm was literally like wire wool sticking into you. I’m on because the girl wants the experience. ‘It hurts, dad.’I stoically tell her it is only a short distance to allow us guinea pigs to be photographed and advise the other members of the family unit to avoid the experience, washing an elephant in a river will suffice for them.

Early the next morning I can’t sleep, and I decide to have a wander. The Chinese nets, cantilevered square framed nets (Shore operated lift nets, if you’re a trainspotter) that dip into the water and ‘grab’ the sea creatures from within. They are manned by Indians, not Chinese, originating form Portuguese Macau and I stand and watch amazed they catch enough to survive. One of the Indian fisherman beckons me over, it is early and there are no tourists there apart from me. So even though, again, I know I am, I don’t feel like one. I feel even more like a piscator, when after a short induction I counterbalance my weight against the net and bring forth my fruits of the sea. If you’re on a diet and like a small amount of tiny fish with a water hyacinth side salad, I’m the type of fisherman you need to employ. Yet again, it is life affirming, I’m immersed, quite literally in another culture, while my family sleep happily, and I can’t help thinking if I was back home, I would be getting up to do another repetitive day’s toil.

The day ends by us choosing lobster and fish to be cooked in an open air restaurant, just next to the nets. It is of course delicious and has the added bonus of being cheap, to us, anyway. The adults want a beer each.

“We can’t serve beer, we don’t have a licence, and the police will shut us down if they catch us.”We know they won’t shut them down, but they will ask for more baksheesh. “We do have ‘special chicken-tea.” We are confused. He assures us we will not be disappointed with his ‘special chicken-tea.’The chicken-tea arrives in a kitsch 70’s chicken jug, and tastes very much like cold beer.

A friend’s mum got divorced and she said to us many years later. ‘Never split up unless you are certain, all those photographs and their associated memories mean nothing to your new partner. The subtext, that is difficult for a lot of humans to say is, ‘I made a mistake.’ This what I think when I see that photo of me and the wife–a photo that will mean almost nothing to someone else, a moment in time, even though we were not ‘young’, the possibilities like now, were endless. You are never too old. As I said before, little ‘mini-retirements’ are the way forward. You might not live to see the ‘nirvana’retirement, and for most, they will be too old, or disinclined to do something adventurous.

The night before we leave we visit a martial arts show which is pretty boring after the novelty of a three stripped metal whip has been thwurted around and sparks flying from the concrete floor. A piece of the band of the whip part is embedded in the ceiling from the night before. Even with the threat of soft flesh being pierced, it fails to engross. They came around with the comments book, we do the usual British thing, complain within our group, then I write some vague platitude about ‘the sizzle, and not the steak.’

Next time: Being a dad.

If you have enjoyed this blog post please retweet or google+ it:

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywor

The AC sleeper-train to Bangalore. Bangalore was the only place in India we saw one of the skinny meandering cows being milked, by a destitute old woman in a back street. We stopped in Bangalore, as the kids wanted to experience a first-class train for the few hour journey to Mysore – a little disappointing as it was not a sleeper, and just a succession of free train stuff; orange juice, papers, tea, food, etc. We had now travelled in every class available.

The idea was to start at Mysore and wind our way through the hills and end up at Fort Kochi on the coast in Kerala. This was Eddie’s idea, to see some of the beautiful sights a lot of tourists miss.

The boy and I discovered they were lighting up the White Palace for an extra night due to Eid al-Fitr. So we rushed back to the guesthouse to get the other two. This was the reason we had decided to start in Mysore, to see the Place illuminated in a flash of electrical brilliance, and it is something that would be difficult to tire of. If you are passing through the area try and catch the radiance of the Majestic White Palace.

We hired a driver to see as much as we could of the area in short time. He didn’t speak very good English which annoyed the wife, but his English was better than my Hindi. She was further annoyed by him wanting Rp200 to park at the White Palace. But any annoyance would pail into insignificance compared to the later ‘coracle incident.’ The kids loved the Zoo, but I always find Zoos in developing countries depressing, animal rights are not hardly high on the list when a large proportion of the population are trying to subsist. It is not long before my mind returns to the White-Handed Gibbon at Kuala ‘elephant’ Lumpur Zoo many years before, whenever zoos are mentioned. As the poor creature in terminal solitary confinement grabbed my wrist as I feed him nuts, and as our primate eyes locked, we both knew he could snap my ulna and radius like twigs, but the defeated sadness in his eyes gave way to resigned subordination. Me guilty of belonging to a ‘higher’race of apes with opposable thumbs, and bigger brains; capable of greater injustices. The irony being in zoos animals live longer than in the wild!

In Tipu’s Summer Palace of the tiger attacking the British soldier fame, there is only a model now, the original was bought back by an Indian businessman from the Victoria and Albert Museum, ‘bought back’ being a strange expression. One of the advantages of having an empire is you get to steal all the good stuff and in a moment of benevolence you can sell the plundered loot back to the originating country. Anyone fancy buying some Elgin Marbles? It was my idea to visit Tipu’s summer house, not just for the history, but I had a curious desire to ride in a coracle, you know, one of those tiny round lightweight boats, my desire became the children’s desire once I had explained the possible delight of hopping aboard a small circular unstable craft. According to the guidebook they were to be found at Tipu’s on the river–they had been moved away recently. Try explaining your desire to carouse a coracle to a non-English speaking driver and watch him reach for a calendar to check it’s not April 1st! He asked around and the coracle dream was back on. It was raining quite heavily and the river was swollen, so we were not allowed to do anything foolish by ourselves and had to have a driver/steerer/oarer. The wife was impatient and did not share the excitement of a rounded boat as we all did, but the enthusiasm was infectious, even more so for the girl as the main reason for caution apart from the raging torrent of the water, was marsh crocodiles. Tourists being eaten by large reptiles is not good for business, and it is sensible to show caution if Indians believe it to be too dangerous.

The wife starts to haggle with the owner and I suggest we wait and see what the locals pay. But before you could say: ‘unstable craft in croc infested waters’: we were in. It was no place for a virgin or amateur coracler. The oarsman span it around and around in the middle of the fast-flowing water to the delight of the children (and me) and the bucket list was ticked. Then, what’s that expression from Gladiator, ‘On my command, release hell.’The wife had agreed to pay the owner Rp200, but now, due to the duration of the boating trip, only wanted to pay Rp100, voices became raised and just when she was about to pay him and walk away, an Indian family got into a coracle and handed over Rp10! She has seen the transaction. Her voice now more aggrieved and angered, and more shouting occurred, ‘It’s disgusting how you rip tourists off. YOU’RE GREEDY. HOW MUCH MONEY DO YOU NEED TO MAKE?’ There was more vitriol that involved a few terms; ‘contract’, legal action’ etc. The children and I are taking steps backwards, shrugging our shoulders and trying to distance ourselves from an angry Indian women addressing a less angry Indian man with a flotilla of coracles. It has come to pass in our family as purely, ‘The Coracle Incident,’ and something’s are best avoided in retrospection. This was not like the beautiful woman I married in New York City Hall, but a culmination of events. The major one being the girl playing up the day before I suspect, and lack of food. A woman scorned maybe a bad thing, but a woman scorned, with a crashing glycemic index is a badder thing! (In our house anyway, and also in the houses’ of her sisters–got to be genetic?) When you travel as a very close unit for months there is little time for the personal space we can all find back home. Try explaining to someone about a past argument over the payment of a coracle, and watch their faces contort and crease in bafflement.

Later at a bird sanctuary, where again we were not allowed to hire a row boat due to the threat of marsh crocodiles. It is safe bet that someone must have been eaten quite recently for this amount of caution. It could have course been the news on the wire about ‘The Coracle Incident!’

I suppose in the blame-culture we live in, I must bear some blame for ‘The Coracle Incident’, as it was my idea. I had a lecturer at university that set off across the bogs/wetlands of the west of Ireland to survey the wildlife, and he took with him a coracle to traverse the waterways. Something I would quite like to have a go at, maybe start by practicing on The Norfolk Fens first (Not Tipu’s River!) On another occasion at uni we used to be given scientific papers to read then summarise to the tutorial group. We had an eccentric lecturer called Dr Goldspink, that would become bored with traipsing through the same lecture for the umpteenth time and start making evidence and facts up–the harvest woodpecker that could count was a particular favourite that has stuck with me. He would shiftily look around the lecture theatre to see if anyone had rumbled him, and if they had, he would give them an almost imperceptible thin smile, for this reason we liked each other. On one specific occasion I had to feedback on social order behaviour in Pan Troglodyte’s communities, chimpanzees in a cage to you and me. I had decided to try and give Dr G a dose of his own mordant medicine, by suggesting the researcher had decided to study the particular community of primates as a coracle had been left in the enclosure and two of the younger adolescents had pretended to row in it. Unfortunately on this specific occasion he was off ill and the substitute lecturer in her first post after graduating failed to pick up on the fact I was making most of the research up! I do hope it has not led to a spate of coracle primate related research within institutions throughout the globe.

The next day we visited a deserted train museum, the sort of place you might bump into Bill Bryson. We left the boy at home to eat his own body weight in biscuits. I think it was that rare occasion when our daughter had both her parents to herself. She relished some creative playtime, climbing and ‘driving’ the trains. Years later I met a native Mysorean (Mysorite sounds too much like a biblical nasty that might live outside Sodom and Gomorrah, or possibly a haemorrhoid cream. The internet tends to call them, ‘the people of Mysore.’) He was amazed I had been to Mysore, overjoyed I had been, but when I told him I particularly liked the small train museum (along with the beaming Palace), he had never visited it. I thought he might commit hari-kari for culturally letting his fellow Mysoreans/Mysorites/POMs down. I live in Manchester, but I have never visited The Hat Museum, but I can live with that.

We spent a night in Bandipur National Park to try and observe wild elephants. Even after two safaris it was still a no-show, saw black and honey bears, and mongooses (plural not mongeeses–strange language English!) On the drive through the park we chanced across a large tusked bull elephant on the road, feeding on the verdant grassed verge. My daughter found this thrilling, which of course it is. The driver was terrified that the elephant, even from the distance it was located might charge us, which was a little overcautious, but he had only hired the car. It did beg the question of how we might sneak by the large pachyderm? Eventually it slopped off, as we were about to leave the park we spotted two sets of elephants grazing on the far side of a valley. If you have a driver, just drive until you happen across some. In theory drivers are not supposed to stop in the national Park, but that’s just in theory. The actual park ranger tourist aspect of the park was very badly organised. I suspect they weren’t that bothered about tourists being attracted in large numbers.

It was a magnificent ride through the Nilgiri Hills, imposing luxuriant mountains and mile after mile of rolling tea plantations. Eventually in no rush we arrived in Ooty. It was cold and damp in the mountains; these are the old hill-station settlements, where the Raj came to avoid the sweltering heat of the plains. It is the alleged birthplace of snooker (1875).

In the funfair in Ooty, which is in the state of Tamil Nadu, we went on a ‘cake-walk’ type ride that was called: ‘Tsunami!’ how untactful is that?

We caught the Blue Mountain Railway from Ooty to Coonor and back. There was a large group of schoolchildren in our open carriage, about eleven years of age. The stern looking female teacher was reading them the riot act in Hindi before the train set off, we, unaware of what dictates she was endorsing. But every time the slow moving train entered one of the many tunnels all the kids yelled and screamed at the top of their voices, undetected in the pitch-black. It was very amusing, something I had never encountered with schoolchildren. In our family we hold our breathe in tunnels, unless we are in Switzerland, works ok in North Wales. This was very amusing, and obviously the main part of the verbal riot act. Reminded me of when Edna Krabappel tells the school kids not to put their arms out of the school bus in The Simpsons, and of course it is the first thing they do.

More scenic driving through the hills to Coimbatore. Ditched the expense of the driver and jumped on a bus to Fort Kochi.

Next time: Chicken tea, anyone?

@thewritingIMP  www.ianmpindar.com

I write books. You can buy any of them at very reasonable prices here: http://www.amazon.co.uk/s/ref=nb_sb_noss_1?url=search-alias%3Daps&field-keywords=ian+m+pindar