Mom in Kerala Part 1

So this time it’s my mom that’s visiting. She spent the first week in Delhi, resting and recuperating from the flight. And then on Saturday we came to Kerala. We were essentially going to retrace the trip that my cousin Jen and I took three years ago.

We started then just south of Kovalam at a resort called Bethsaida whose profits go to support the orphanages they run. The resort has grown a lot in three years – they now have a five story building for rooms and what looks like a future conference hall. They have a more comfortable open air restaurant but that’s still temporary – they are using the room Jen and I stayed in as the staging area for food and the restaurant is really just tables outside. They also built several new upscale cottages and a beautiful pool (top pict is of it and the ocean). We asked why the pool had a sign saying “we’re sorry” next to it and they said they had violated some government regulations and the government had come and destroyed the pool house so it was an apology to the government. I can’t imagine the regulations were anything we cared if they broke but who knows.

Some other things hadn’t changed at all. The fishermen still used boats consisting of three logs tied together. The guy from Bethsaida that is the lifeguard/beach caddy for umbrellas and mats/gardener/letter out of the geese, Babu, is still there and as nice as ever. We met his son on a walk, who takes care of a beach several blocks down. The beaches are probably even more beautiful than I remember – little coves surrounded by cliffs on either side and forests of palm trees on the land-side. Some of the coves aren’t little at all, actually and are huge stretches of totally unoccupied beach (if you don’t count the boats). The resort next door, Surya Sumadra, is still just wonderful. The lady who sells pineapples on the beach – and cores and cuts them before I’ve even found the money in my beach bag is still there. She didn’t give me the sob story about all the medications she requires but she did try to launch into a story of her woeful life. A new fishermen (okay he’s probably been there forever but I met him for the first time this trip) was wonderful and toothless and couldn’t believe I wasn’t married at 31 and told me to come back and visit him with my husband next year, after I turned down his offer to come to his house to see his TV. I think my mother being around makes people want to remind me to get married – because my tailor was also telling me it was about time.

This place reminds me to let down my guard once in a while, as sometimes people are just genuinely nice. Plus the monkey totally ignored me as it walked by this morning. And maybe I misjudged the dog who ran up to me in what I took as an attack – maybe he just wanted to play. Next time I’m introducing the new kittens to the monkey – I think they’d get along nicely.

We ended up skipping the backwaters overnight to spend a little more time in Fort Kochi. Jen and I just had a few hours in Cochin and never even made it to the fort area (which is a little peninsula that used to be settled by the Dutch). So I’m writing this on the 5 hour train ride (versus the 24 hour boat ride). The backwaters are so beautiful – I hope I haven’t made a mistake in skipping them this time.