Leaving Notes from Kannur, Kerala

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• Home-cooked Keralan food in three words: Coconut Oil Bath.
• Now I really like chai (Indian tea). I drink it without sugar whenever possible. After two small cups, I can even get a good caffeine buzz.
• Payyambalam is a really nice beach in Kannur district (northern Kerala state). It was totally undeveloped and picture-perfect with palm trees along the shore. There is also a driving beach about 10km to the south, but I forget its name. It seemed nicer and less filled with litter.
• I have seen a lot of people littering. The first time I witnessed someone throw a plastic bottle out the window of our car, I gasped.
• There was an empty gasoline tank floating on the beach, in and out with the tide. I smiled when a friend ran out before me to pick it up. But then he just threw the plastic container back into the ocean as far as he could (like that would get rid of it?).
• More trash cans might help. I usually have to carry my rubbish with me in my backpack for a few hours until I can find somewhere to dispose it.
• Driving south to Cochin, we passed a few road-side fish and prawn stalls. The fish and the shrimp were raw for the buying in the open air.. I could smell each one at 50 km/per hour.
• Another example of make-work jobs in India... There were three people employed at each toll booth on the highway. One to collect our fare, one to issue the change, and one to record the transaction in a log book.
• A lot of these bullets could be interpreted as negative, so I will try to think of a few positive bullet points.
• A delicious Keralan snack - banana pancakes.
• The Malayalam script looks really cool. Each letter is rounded and squiggly.
• For the budget traveler, you can't beat Indian trains. A 2nd-class ticket for a 3.5-hour ride cost me Rs36 (less than US$1). When I got on the train, I quickly upgraded my ticket to a 1st-class Air Conditioned bed-seat for only US$8.