Kerala Pt. 2, Kochi

    On Saturday we explored Kochi.  We visited the palace of the royal family (they were around until a little after WWII) in the morning.  It has an amazing road/ stairs leading up to the building.  It really makes you feel like you are approaching somewhere important.  Sadly, once inside there are no photographs.  The building was set up like a museum.

 At the palace there is a deer park.  They like to eat leaves and are not afraid of people.

 Jack fruit trees are not uncommon.

      In India commercial vehicles are awesome.  Apart from belonging to a long forgotten decade, they have awesome paint jobs going for them.  Each one will have wonderfully bright paintings on the cab and often extending around the entire vehicle.  Depictions of deer and birds are common.  Another great part is the messages painted above the bumpers.  I have seen "We two, us one" "One mother" "Life is not a race, drive with grace" "one is best, avoid aides" "keep at least 1 meter" and my personal favorite (pictured above) "OH MY GOD."  I found it fitting considered that the bumper is the height of a regular Indian car's windshield.

 Later on we got Ayurvedic massages.  This picture is all I want to say about that.

 We went to Jew Town. Yes, that is the official neighborhood's name.  It used to have many jews and a famous synagogue.  Now it has two old Jews and tons of Kashmiri business men.  I didn't have my camera, but imagine a quaint little street with shops.  I bought an Indian Doti there (man-skirt).  I wore it for the rest of the day and had a great response.  The only problem was that every single person on the street stopped me to show me the way they grew up tying it.  It was a fun time.  After Jew Town we went to the fish market.

 We would watch the Chinese fish nets grab the fish and then we could pick the one we wanted to eat.

 Prawns

 Chef right next to the market.

 Indian Bob Marley.

Kerala Pt. 1, Houseboat

 Last Friday, we went to Alappuzha, Kerala to relax on a houseboat.  The area of the country is called the backwaters.   It is an extensive network of canals and lakes near the coast, but separated entirely from the sea.  It is one of the most peaceful and beautiful places I have ever been.

A picture of the inside of the boat.  We had three full bedrooms with bathrooms.  At the back there was a kitchen (it stayed very busy cooking fresh fish).

 typical scenes

 lots of space to hang out

 houses right against the water

 A woman waits for the water taxi

    Life in the backwaters is definitely at a slower pace. Plenty of people rely on canoes to get to roads, and definitely everyone washes their clothes by hand.

 The churches are very colorful.

 Guys catching ducks.  We ate one.

 The whole day was overcast and tranquil.

 The backwaters are pretty busy with boats.  Some are double deckers.

 We swam.  Still waiting on the tapeworm verdict.

Night time on the water as we ate dinner.

busy busy

I have been pretty busy lately.  Lots of railroad and weekend trips.  I visited the most beautiful place in the world, Kerala.  I will be uploading pictures from the houseboat, tea plantation, and fort Cochin in the coming week.  But for now I'm off to Bangalore!

Another day at the rail

Paneer is a great guy.  We usually end up walking together or sitting in the backseat together on the drive out to the rails.  He is an all-purpose helper around the lab, and is always making people smile.  He showed me some of his favorite Tamil songs (Tamil is the local language)- they kind of reminded me of Cuban or Spanish music with an Asian feel.  

 There were some baby goats- it's hard to see how small they were.

 A woman tending to her heard.

 The landscape changes a lot depending how much water there is.  Some parts are very arid- others lush.  It changes in a matter of feet.

 Rice fields.. I think.

 It was so green. Very pretty.

For the win

 This picture pretty much sums up what it's like to drive a rickshaw.  We went shopping and eating on Saturday and the rickshaw driver wanted me to drive- so I did.  It was very fun and even more fun that I had no idea what he was trying to tell me while I was driving.  His English wasn't the best and I had a bad case of tunnel vision.

Here's him supervising my driving.

He recommended this amazing North Indian food restaurant that had amazing mutton curry.  Here's the gang getting ready to chow down.

The shopping was fun I guess.  It was cool to see some of the amazing craftsmanship and art produced within India.  Apart from the most beautiful jewelry I ever saw, I saw amazing wood and marble work.  Here are a few that I appreciated: 

 This piece (and hundreds of other varieties) are a solid piece of rock.  Within the outer design is another design with figurines carved inside of the sphere.  Some of the more elaborate pieces had figurines inside of figurines inside of figurines, if you know what I mean.  Hopefully looking at the picture explains it because I doubt that did.

 Inside the elephants' backs are more elephants. Bwaaaaah

This table was hand made and had beautiful inlay.

Also, Asaad found a genie lamp.  Pure silver of course.

We also saw a cool apartment/loft:

And inside the mall with the movie theater we went to we saw the creepiest clown ever.  It was like chucky and the devil schemed up away to make people feel uncomfortable.  Look in the picture to see if you can find him:

Yeah, he's the three and a half foot tall creature staring at the camera, near all the little kids.  Glad I never had to grow up with those nightmares.

Stare Down

When I was walking back from work today I found myself 5 feet from this lil guy.  I thought the deer definitely saw me, and didn't care that I was so close.  As I was taking the picture he noticed me, and we got in a very tense stare down.  I could see the muscles in his chest rippling as he tensed to spring.  It was kind of nerve wracking- so he got his own post.

Quick note: I guess two weeks was my threshold on blogging- sorry for the delay on posts.  I'll try and keep them coming as well as keep them in the right order (some aren't in this last string of posts, but I guess worse things can happen).  Thanks for reading!

Rail testing

A fun part of where I intern/job shadow is field trips to the rail yard in Tirumalpur. It is an hour and a half west of Chennai in a more rural area.  I really enjoy the change of scenery and the open skies. We go to this section of rail because it is not heavily used, which gives us time to run the equipment we are testing the rails with.

The one train that reaches the station.

The trolley with the railway engineers posing for a shot

The ultrasonic sensors that check rails for standard features and potential flaws (the water is sprayed on the rail)

The whole set up. The testing for the day was blessed (not sure if that is the right way of putting it)

close up of the burning 

incense

more playing around

I had woken up extra early to play cricket (at six in the morning we were to meet) but my friend never showed up with his cricket gang.  All in all it ended up being a long 12 hour day, but it was fun to experience the rail testing.  Right when I got back we left for Pondicherry.