India Wrapup

Our last few weeks in India plodded along at a slower pace than usual, due to a few factors out of our control. The tsunami closed the beaches, Marita came down with a fever, and we were ready for a break in general.



From Varkala, we moved on to Trivandrum (or Thiruvananthapuram, for short), the capital of Kerala. It had some fun museums and temples, but only enought to amuse us for a couple days. Next we took the train to Madurai, home of the Meenakshi temple, a gigantic complex including four nine-story towers carved with over 1000 religious figures each. It's a very active temple, so the city draws pilgrims year-round. During our visit, the town's streets were packed with red-clad women participating in a fertility festival. The night we left, almost every body on the train platforms was dressed in red or orange folds, with flowers woven into their hair.







On New Year's Eve, we rolled in Pondicherry, where city festivities had been canceled in the aftermath of the quake. Our celebration consisted mostly of gorging ourselves on a gigantic French buffet. Pondicherry used to be a French colony, so the food, the city, and the tourists all carried a French accent.



We actually ended up staying in Pondicherry longer than we expected. The hotel room was clean and cool, with cable TV and terrific room service, so it was a natural resting place for Marita, who had developed a fever. We watched some terrible movies, though.



Our last stop was Mamalapuram, a coastal town with a history of stone carving. We loved exploring the park in the center of town, which includes a tremendous number of caves and statues carved from the hills.







Our last day was spent in Chennai, where we met one of Maris Graube's friends, K Venkat Krishnan, who took us out to a lip-smacking dinner. Thanks for the great send-off, KVK.



And what better way to leave India than with full bellies? Truly, India's food is one of the best reasons to nix a diet and visit the subcontinent. The breads vary from thin crisps (papad), to teardrop-shaped naan, to the velvety folds of rumali roti ("handkerchief bread"). The sweets are consistant, in that they're all too sweet for western tastes, but they include dense, milk-flavored blocks, and spongey, syrup-drenched balls of rasgulla.



One of my favorites is the onion rava masala dosa. The dosa is a crepe of rice and lentil, eaten (like everything else) with the hands, and dipped into a spicy sambar or chutney. Masala refers to any mixture of spices, and in this case, the spiced mixure of vegetables rolled inside the dosa. Rava is whole-wheat flour, and the onion rava masala dosa -- that's pure heaven. Here's a shot of the paper dosa, the paper-thin relative of the regular dosa.







Many restaurants serve only thali, multi-item meals presented in an array of little bowls, or in small piles of food scattered about a banana leaf. Here's one of Marita's more colorful thali plates.







So that's it for India -- on to Thailand. Two last shots for the road.