Trivandrum to Kochi

First of all, HAPPY NEW YEAR!
We left Trivandrum on the afternoon of the 29th and hopped on our first train so far in India. We had bought coach class tickets a few days before after an attendant insisted it was "not possible" to get first or second class. We showed up plenty early hoping that we could give one of India's many mottoes a try on a small scale - 'if there's a will, there's a way'. It turned out that, according to the reservations posted on printer paper on the side of each car, there were probably a good 50 or so seats available in 2nd class A/C. After consulting a local in the same boat and waiting fruitlessly for someone official to cross our paths that we could ask, we climbed aboard and found two unreserved seats and settled in. Eventually an attendant came around and for a small fee we were allowed to stay put for our 5 hour ride. Pretty straight forward, but with an number of much longer Indian train rides in our near future, we're trying to learn quickly. We currently have 1st class (2nd tier A/C) tickets back to Hyderabad on the 5th, but are currently 'Waitlist 4/5' and neither of us knows precisely what that means, but were told we would be "guaranteed" seats (I'm not sure we know what that actually means here either). This ride will be about 26 hours - so wish us luck.

Kochi has been been a nice mix of lazy meandering among the many winding streets, full of crumbling old buildings, communist propaganda (Kerala has an interesting history in that regard), and, oddly enough, Bob Marley paraphernalia, and chaotic, jubilant celebration of the New Year.  New Year's Eve itself was kind of nuts. We wandered around for a good hour after dinner (delicious prawns masala from a local outdoor restaurant) trying to find some place to grab a drink or celebrate in some way (Kochi is practically a dry town), until we finally stumbled upon an enormous beachside gathering, focused loosely around a 20 foot tall effigy of some sort of bizarre pumpkin-head man. As minutes ticked by towards midnight, the crowd slowly packed denser and became more boisterous - after beckoning several times and then finally insisting, one of the many police officers succeeded in herding us into a clump of other obvious tourists - they seemed to understand something that we didn't quite yet. As the pumpkin man was finally set ablaze and fireworks started shooting off, things got pretty ridiculous - not sure if this was the case in the whole crowd, or just around our increasingly tightly packed group of outsiders, but pretty soon we were being jostled and crammed in a bit-too-aggressive way. Did our best to hold our ground through the show, mixing a few elbows back in with the shoves from behind, then somehow snaked our way out of the crowd back towards our street. We stopped into a little second-floor restaurant we had grabbed some snacks in the day before - as they had they had given us a friendly parting offer to "come back later for a beer". As far as we could tell, the place was entirely run by 20 year old guys - some of the nicest and goofiest people we've met on this trip. After a good 45 minutes of chatting them up, a few drinks finally showed up from the back room. Everyone seemed in pretty great spirits, plenty of dancing, some bizarre conversation with an either severely inebriated or just plain weird Swiss guy who just kept repeating himself about Switzerland having too much money and something vague about Obama. Eventually a parade of tan-uniformed, standard-issue mustached police officers marched up the stairs into the restaurant and proceeded to roughly round up all the young local guys  while just ignoring the tourists. It became clear that this was an all too common occurrence and that they'd all be back in the morning. A bit of a damper on the end of an otherwise rewarding night - we felt that we did at least a small bit of justice to bringing in the new year in India.

One of a large number of tourist-oriented spice shops - we picked up a few things from one run by a women's collective

I love the trees here

Chinese fishing nets

New Year's Eve mass

One look at this weird guy and I knew he'd be on fire shortly

Yep.

New friends showing us how to get down, India style. We had nothing on their moves.

 We met up with our new buddy the next day after a late lunch, as he had mentioned he'd be playing cricket most of the day. I've been determined to make some sense of the game while I'm here and was offered a few chances to swing the bat (with a little success).

Cricket lesson

Then we made it over to the main road that runs through Kochi island for the New Years Day Parade. It was quite the trip. Elephants (okay, just one), tribal costumes, insane drum troops, and a surprising number of men in drag. Aside from feeling like some of the drums were dislodging things deep inside my ears, it was a ton of fun. Highlight was probably when what I can only describe as a drag version of Vishnu singled me out of the crowd (I stand out enough as it is) for an intense staring contest. S/he won. People (us included) thought that was HILARIOUS.

Bigfoot?

Santa?

More in Kochi to come soon!  We leave in about two days for our train back to Hyderabad.