Good-bye Sri Lanka

Sri Lanka has given me a good break from India, lovely beaches, nice surf and sooo quiet. I spent 2 days in Hikkaduwa, which is the more developed surf beach on the west of the island. Waiters even spoke German and there were plenty of retired people around, so after exploring some of the surroundings I moved to less developed Weligama, which was recommended to me by other surfers.

It was very nice. The guest house was right at the beach in front of the surf spot. Apart from the other 5 guesthouses and the surfers in them there is no tourism, it's a real fishing village. Apart from surfing, sleeping, eating and - well, one night of arrack drinking (which I sincerely regretted the next morning) - there was nothing much to do.

Nonetheless, there was no lack of excitement. I had some interesting experiences with the animal world of Sri Lanka. A massive beetle, around 5 cm long, with hooks on its legs and making the sound of a helicopter refused to leave my bedroom one night - it was 3 a.m. when I finally got it out. The similarly sized cockroaches living in the cracks of the bathroom floor were the real owners of the hut. A python and other types of snakes were put around my neck and an octopus came round during my snorkeling trip (only to end up as dinner of some locals).



Everything would have been so nice if this short excursion to Sri Lanka had not ended with quite a nightmare. Some weeks ago India had introduced a new law that does not allow re-entry into the country within 2 months (based on an incident involving terrorists last year who left and entered the country around 200 times without anyone noticing).

So now, anyone who leaves the country and tries to re-enter it in within 2 months is considered a potential terrorist and has to undergo a series of time-consuming, chaotic procedures that were mainly devised to make money (of course, you have to pay for the privilege to re-enter on a perfectly valid tourist visa) and give people as hard a time as possible.

This, of course, I not did not know and I had not been informed about on leaving the country. I only found out by another German surfer, who had spent 1 day in the Indian High Commission without receiving his re-entry permission and then had given up and changed his travel plans.

After I had heard about this on Saturday I made my way to the Indian High Commission in the capital, Colombo, on Monday early morning since my flight was due on Tuesday 4 pm. It turned out that spending the entire day of Monday and most of Tuesday at High Commission was not enough to get my re-entry stamp into the passport in time. Not to mention that I had only 8 days to visit Sri Lanka, 2 of which I now spent in the most unwelcoming place on the island, the Indian High Commission.

At the end I got my stamp 3 hours too late to catch my plane. The officers had known about my flight (from the moment of my arrival at the High Commission I had told them over and over again that I needed my passport back by Tuesday 12 noon to make it to the airport; in addition they also let down a group 12 elderly Americans who were on the same flight with me, we had begged, pleaded and fought together - in vain). The officers deliberately delayed (!) handing out our passports so we would all miss our plane. It was so obvious and there was nothing we could do.

I cannot describe the scenes that were taking place in that office. People who knew nothing about that law arrived straight from the airport because they had not been permitted to get on their flights, others had important business or family emergencies and were stuck because these officers were too lazy (or too mean) to speed up the process of placing a simple stamp their passports, others only flew to India to catch a connecting flight, which they were in danger of missing.

People were shouting, crying, begging, pleading. It felt like a refugee camp, only that the refugees were tourists on legitimate multiple-entry visas (that was the real joke about it!)

I had to spend a considerable amount of money changing my flights and buying new tickets, plus additional hotel nights etc. Apparently there are complaints about this crazy situation from international embassies, but who knows when this law will be changed... it's India after all.

I just advise everybody who goes to India:
do not leave the country planning to re-enter (at least not within 2 months), do not book any connecting flights over India, you might not be able to re-enter on the way back and miss all your connections, do not try to renew an expired visa (unless you are in your home country - after waiting for 2-3 weeks you will simply be rejected, I have seen this happen to various people during the 2 days I spent in the High Commission)!

So, I am off to the airport now - finally.

Sri Lanka pics:

Sri Lanka

How to be Indian...

Certain characteristics of Indians never cease to be the talk of travelers - they bring backpackers of all nationalities (except Indians, of course) closer together, you may talk shop with Koreans or Brazilians alike on the wondrous world of Indian behavior. So if you want to become Indian you might consider adopting the following behaviors...

- clear your throat prolonged and as noisily as possible of mucus and spit the collected matter in front of other people's feet
- burp often and loudly
- wear mustache (male & female alike)
- avoid politeness (exception: salespeople, train your "Hello Madam, look here Sir"), phrases like "sit here" or whistling will do the job
- cultivate lying and cheating
- never carry change (money), or at least always pretend not to
- pretend to be dumb if you don't want to deliver a service (equally: only understand English if you may gain a benefit from it)
- always answer "Yes" regardless of the question asked, support your answer by shaking your head
- consistently get directions and durations wrong (intentionally or unintentionally), if you don't have a clue about the directions you are asked make them up
- when you see a foreigner do not hesitate to force inquiries on them like, "Your name!" or "Which job?" without prior introduction.
(One anecdote on this habit: I was walking by the riverside in Hampi, which is also used by Indians for their morning toilet (i.e. shit), when suddenly a voice came out of a bush "Your country!". It seems to be a reflex in Indians that cannot be suppressed even in their most private moment of taking a dump...)

I, on the other hand, do try to adapt in some ways, if only to be able to advance in my travels and save time. My English dangerously deteriorated and I articulate myself in sentences like: "When bus coming?" or "Me already have dinner", and avoiding yes/no questions at all times.

I also had to reinvent my CV:
Now I am German (Austria is invariably mistaken for Australia and it requires a lengthy geographic explanation to illustrate the difference), I am married (being older than, let's say 18, and not being married is as incomprehensible to them as having no religion), so my husband is at home working, I am traveling with a friend (who accidentally is not with me right now), I am a journalist for a travel magazine, or in tougher situations: I work for the police/military, I have no money.

And now finally, my last photo album on India (including Hampi, Gokarna, backwaters):

India South

Writing this I am already in Sri Lanka - back to civilization, people speak English and sometimes apparently also the truth :)

I will check into the Ayurveda clinic on Feb. 18th, so maybe I can upload some stuff on Sri Lanka beforehand, but maybe I will be too busy surfing the waves...!

The backwaters of Kerala

I considered myself lucky again - my train arrived on time in Alleppey, and I had met a couple on the train, Angela from Melbourne and Manel from Barcelona, who also wanted to go on one of the famous houseboat trips in the backwaters. In the guesthouse we picked up Jess from England, and the next day the four of us set out on this incredibly relaxing trip.

The backwaters are basically water streets, people live in small houses lined up by the waterside and grow rice on a lower level behind the rivers. The houseboats seem to be used for tourism only but they are very pretty and it is tempting to stay on them for much longer than the usual overnight trip, which unfortunately lasts only half a day and a night as in the morning the boats rush back to prepare for the next customers.



After that I went up to Kochi, a nice enough town (especially the part called Fort Cochin, even though there is no fort to be seen), and surprisingly clean by Indian standards. The guesthouses call themselves 'homestay' but usually they are just the same as anywhere else.

I found a nice woman to take a cooking lesson from, so now I know how to make chapati and some other South Indian dishes - the big advantage of this lesson was that I got to chose the amount of chili to put into the dish. So finally I was able to discern what the dishes actually taste like!

On Gokarna beaches & Indian Men

I got myself a cute beach hut made from palm leaves and with a 'natural' sand floor for less than 3 EUR on Om Beach near Gokarna. The beach is quite nicely shaped like an Om-sign and not as overcrowded as the nearby Kutley beach (which is quite nice nevertheless, especially if you want to show off your Yoga or drumming skills or other weird forms of meditation at sunset on the beach).



What was rather disturbing on Om beach were the hordes of Indian men who came to stare at female tourists in bikinis and shamelessly took photos - they were hard to ignore.

I will never understand the double standard in this country - on the one hand people feel offended if you show your bare shoulders or knees (it is considered a sign of disrespect), on the other hand Indian men seem to barely be able to restrain themselves from tearing the clothes off female tourists.

The story goes that Western women uniformly have the morals of porn actresses, this knowledge is apparently taken from Western blue movies which are highly popular among Indian men. It happened to me more than once that a seemingly good-mannered, cultured Indian guy wanted to turn the conversation into dirty sex talk, and more than once I had to fight off stray hands from strangers and shout at them. It seems that the more restricted the society is, the more perverse its men are.



Anyhow, the next day Clip and Mellie from Berlin arrived and we hiked over to the quieter & more beautiful Paradise beach and spend a nice, relaxing day.

On the way back we even saw dolphins! That evening Susi and Jason also arrived and our group was complete for a few hours until I took off with the night train to Kerala.

The long road to Hampi...

It started out harmlessly - I got a ticket from Goa to Hampi on the overnight bus without any trouble, the bus was more than on time, that is, it left 20 min earlier than scheduled (this must have happened the first time in the history of Indian public transport).

At 2 a.m. I got rudely woken up by Indian screaming "bus change!!". OK, whatever. The 'new' bus went off, soon started making roaring sounds and stopped shortly after. I woke up at 8 a.m. realizing that we were still at the same spot, in the middle of nowhere. Scenario: 2 broken down PAULO buses by the side of the road, some very confused tourists, and one tiny food/drinks stall making the business of a lifetime:



Apparently a mechanic was on the way, expected to arrive within 2 - 3 hrs. Since Hampi was "just" 250 km away some of us figured it might be wiser to call a taxi. Miraculously (that is after promising a fee of 5000 RS) a taxi appeared and 7 of us happily piled in, almost sitting on top of each other. That was at around 10 a.m. At 12 a.m., a number of errants and two fillings of propane gas bottles later (I didn't know that cars can run on this...) we finally hit the road.

The driver had promised to arrive around 2.30 p.m. The hours passed. The driver seemed to be lost in small village roads (although he would never admit to it), his average speed was 45 km/h. Food was nowhere to be found and we were all starving. We finally arrived at 10 p.m. - 12 hrs after he had picked us up, and 24 hrs after starting a supposedly 10 hrs long trip!

In Hampi all guesthouses were full due to a festival going on that was attended by 4 Million (!) Indians. Luckily we all managed to find some place or the other to crash. The next day we heard that our bus had arrived 1 hr after us but dropping the remaining passengers in a different town 14 km away!

After all this transport hassle I decided to be my own driver for a change and rented a little girlie-motorbike. I thoroughly enjoyed cruising through the impressive boulder landscape and along the rice fields of Hampi, jumping from rocks and visiting innumerable temples.

My favorite vehicle so far on this trip:



For the way back I steadfastly refused to take a PAULO bus again and luckily found a ticket for ISLAND bus, whose driver raced like a madman over the bumpiest of all roads dropping us in Gokarna at 5 a.m., I could not believe that I
a) was still alive (well, at least until the cows started attacking...)
b) had really arrived after traveling only for 1 night.