A taste of comparative luxury

It was the bathroom that drove me out of Alleppey; that and the feeble light-bulb (and questionable wiring;) the soot-coloured dust on the wall-tiles and Charles, the rather large cockroach. The slow-boat to Kottayam was a great way to unwind, though it was a pity that the boat stopped 15km short of the town, - once again the waterway was non-navigable due to bridge works.
As I disembarked on hands and knees, trying to climb onto the jetty while laden down with my backpack, I was surprised to hear an English voice, asking if I would like to split the cost of an auto-rickshaw to get us into the town centre. He was an architecture graduate who had decided to travel before joining the rat-race, and he was headed to the bus station, which was literally across the road from my hotel.

Arcadia Hotel

We chatted as our transportation wove its way through the country lanes, then through the deserted streets - everything was closed. We learned that Kottayam is a predominantly Christian town, and Good Friday is taken very seriously. So seriously, in fact, that all the bars were closed and the hotels deserted. As I waved farewell to my travelling companion, he headed off to catch a bus to Munnar, and I stepped into the icy-cool airconditioning of the hotel lobby.

I could have been anywhere, but for once I did not object to the anonymous character of the hotel. I knew I had air-conditioning, a king-size bed with crisp sheets and a chance to treat myself to some creature comforts for a couple of days, before my next three weeks at Mattindia.


The sad news was that the hotels in Kottayam were all struggling with the local bureaucrats over the renewal of their licences to sell alcoholic beverages. So no drinks for the weekend unless I took an auto-rickshaw to a hotel outside the city limits. I realised that having gone through Lent without alcohol, it wouldn't hurt me to go a little longer. I was encouraged by the sight of the rather smart vegetarian restaurant next door and the possibility of some fresh fish later in the evening.

My favourite place in Munnar

 A typical vegetarian restaurant in Kerala would put McDonalds to shame when it comes to turning the tables. Most customers are in and out in ten to fifteen minutes; most patrons know what will be on the menu; and most of the dishes are cooked and ready to serve. The restaurant in Munnar was outstanding, with a queue out into the street and waiters moving like greased lightning.
Crockery is replaced with an 18-inch length of banana leaf; cutlery is used only for dishing out sauces, which is why and there is usually a queue of people at the back of the restaurant, waiting to get at the washbasins and rinse their fingers, before they sit down. 

Iddlis - One of my favourite breakfasts !

Yes - it's finger-food, and there's an art to learning how to group the middle three fingers of your right hand into a shovel and use the back of the thumb as a pusher. Woe betide you if you forget the ban on using the left hand. The left hand has other uses, and you'll learn that skill if you forget to take toilet paper with you to the loo.  
I love Iddlis for breakfast: steamed rice cakes served with Sambar - a spicy vegetable broth -  then a ladle of Vegetable Korma and a puddle of coconut sauce. Break up the Iddly and mop up the other dishes. On this occasion I splashed out extravagantly on freshly liquidised pineapple juice for an extra 50 pence - more than doubling the total price of my breakfast.

A typical lunchtime Thali

At lunchtimes, the favourite is the 80 p Thali which is an eat-as-much-as-you-like dish of rice, chapatis, poppadums and up to six different curries. Waiters hover around with deep pots of all the curries and sauces, waiting to replenish your tray, or top up the rice.

My room was perfect, and I dozed for an hour browsing a novel on my Kindle. The Arcadia was on skeleton staff for Good Friday, and the kitchen was closed. Consequently, I took an auto-rickshaw to one of the other plush hotels, (after the Arcadia manager rang around to find an establishment that was fully functional.) 
One of the things to beware of in India is the "multi-cuisine restaurant," where you find anything from Chicken Chow Mein to Fish 'n Chips, and from Southern Fried Chicken to Spaghetti Bolognese.

Spicy squid rings

You can typically find more than 100 dishes on some such menus, and such a plethora of choice usually means a low standard of quality. I trusted my instinct on this occasion and picked out a Kerala dish of spicy-sauced squid (calamari.) I enjoyed this with a couple of chappatis, all washed down with a litre of bottled water.
And if I had avoided the banana split afterwards, I would have been pretty much sticking to my restricted food intake.But I yielded to temptation, even though, to be honest, it wasn't the best banana split I have tasted... not by a long banana.