In the end, I paddled us through the lagoon because Julian turned out to be better at steering.  When I first looked at the schedule and realized that we'd been allotted a day to do nothing but relax by a lake, I wasn't thrilled.  It came at the perfect time, though.  Julian and I had so much fun just reading on the cement porch, swimming and periodically gorging ourselves on the excellent South Indian buffet.  We also took tea by the lake and watched woven houseboats sail by.

The next day, we left Kumarakom  for Alleppey to take a short boat cruise of our own.  We had originally wanted to cruise with our own houseboat (and captain and chef) for a few days, but it was simply too expensive.  So we settled for a 2-hour tour of the backwaters.  It was so peaceful, gliding through the waters and seeing rows of houseboats lined up by the shore waiting for tourist season to begin again.  About an hour into our tour, the boat headed for what appeared to be someone's house.  There was a sign - "Tender Coconuts" - and a hawk perched on the sign's edge.  Before the woman left to chop open our coconuts, she coaxed the hawk onto her hand and perched him on Julian's hand.  After a few minutes, she led him onto my hand, and he (or she?) turned and looked at me.  I was nervous - no part of the bird's deadly defenses had been neutralized, and in addition to the talons grippiing my skin, it had a hooked beak ending in a needle point.  It blinked its yellow eyes and turned back around.

Our coconuts were finally ready and I was disappointed to see that the husks had already turned brown... but then I took a sip.  My coconut was brimming with water, just barely sweet.  We sipped greedily and the coconuts were empty in only a few minutes.  The woman took mine back from me and chopped the top off, then made a little paddle spoon by slicing off part of the side.  She loosened all of the flesh before handing it to me, then went to work on Julian's coconut.  The translucent gelatin flesh of that coconut was so perfect - I added it to my catalogue of tastes and textures that I may never be lucky enough to experience again.

Although I threatened to stay on the boat forever, I followed Julian off at the dock and we went to Cochin and were pleasantly surprised to find ourselves in an even nicer hotel than the one we left.  The next day we went sightseeing - I thought that the shoe-shedding was over, but the Jewish synagogue made us leave our sandals at the door.  Of the religious places we have visited, though, I must say that the synagogue was the cleanest.  We also saw Chinese fishing net contraptions, the Dutch Palace and a few places from afar - sightseeing got old a few weeks ago, and we were just glad that we didn't need to pay any tips.

On the topic of tips, Julian and I were discussing what to pay our excellent driver, and we came to very different conclusions.  For some reason, he hasn't captured our heart like our first driver, whose entire body expressed anguish at all times, never knew where we were going, took us to bad restaurants that awarded finders' fees to drivers and allocated his money poorly and had to ask us for a few advances on his tips.  He also lost us at the Taj Mahal.  We did appreciate how excited he would get when he entered the sights with us; he was especially excited when the guide would explain things to him in Hindi and would sometimes ask for his picture to be taken.  Despite all this, we gave him a huge and probably undeserved tip because we knew that it would make such a big difference to his life and that of his family.  The last driver was always on time, always knew where we are going and somehow predicted things that we wanted to see but didn't think of.  He always looked clean, spoke fluent English and respected all of our wishes, but dropped in morose statements about his current situation when asked (Having realized too late that "How did you sleep" comes with an answer like "Not good" or "In my car", I finally ceased to ask).  For some reason, his competence makes me want to give him less, because I feel that he doesn't need the money as badly; however, it makes Julian want to give him a lot more because he feels that the sum suggested by the travel agent is too paltry to make any difference in his life.  We agreed on a compromise, but I couldn't figure out how we had come to such different conclusions.

As I was still wondering, we arrived in Delhi to find that our first driver would be taking us around for the next 3 days.  At first I was happy, but after a car accident (I had mild whiplash for about 10 minutes, but we were otherwise fine) and a muttered request for 500 rupees up front, I miss our competent driver, even though he tried to make us feel guilty.  As it turns out, pity is the stronger force - we agreed to give our first and final driver a tip at least 3 times what he deserves so that his car accident won't bankrupt him.  I can't wait to get back to the States.

Sacrilege

"So you're sad because you defiled the temple?"

My mouth went into a round O as I remembered that women were not allowed in temples during their menses, and we both started to laugh. Julian said, "Well, I think that you and Shiva are about even now."

We visited a number of other ancient sites, including an improbably balanced rock nicknamed "Krishna's Butter Ball," but with Julian teasing me about sacrilege every time reached a sight, I did not actually enter another temple building.

Today was 9 hours on an Indian train, which Julian was very excited about until he climbed on and realized that these were not plush 19th century trains with dining cars.  I hope never to take a train again.

Scarier than a roller coaster

We begin our journey through South India in Chennai, where the agency has booked us a room far nicer than our level of cleanliness deserves.  The food in the restaurant is cheap and good.  I am happy.

The tour agency sent us a driver, who greeted us and started driving to an undisclosed location.  We found ourselves at the City Museum, which has a number of ancient artifacts that would probably have been interesting if they were accompanied by more detailed descriptions.  From there, we went to a cathedral and visited the tomb of Jesus' apostle Doubting Thomas, and then the driver had no more to show us.  Instead of going back to our hotel, we asked him to leave us at a mall that I had seen on the way so that we could eat at a reasonably priced restaurant and Julian could buy even more books.

The mall was a good decision.  I had the best tandoori chicken of my life, and my bookworm came away with 4 more books.  He was pretty excited about taking an autorickshaw (known in other parts of the world as a tuk-tuk) back to our hotel.  We walked to the stand and negotiated what I thought was a pretty bad price, but I was desperate to get home.  The driver tried a few times to convince us to go to a shopping complex and we refused, but then he said, "You go, free T-shirt."  He pointed to himself and nodded happily.  It seemed like a nice thing to do, so we agreed to take a look around but not buy anything.

In an Indian city, depending on where you stand and which way the wind is blowing, any number of smells come drifting toward you - rosewater, urine, hot oil, feces (human and animal), bubbling curry, sour fish.  When we left the shopping complex and our driver came tripping into our autorickshaw, all of these smells were overpowered by heady perfume of marijuana.  The driver started to leave, then stopped and parked in the middle of the exit to the parking lot.  Hopping out, he poked his head in to look at us with a many-toothed grin - "I forgot t-shirt!" - then ran back into the store.  When he came back a minute later, we began our harrowing odyssey home by narrowly missing a schoolboy crossing the street, then coming within an inch of crashing into the back of a truck.  Every honk behind us seemed to sound impending death.  We stopped at 2 gas stations along the way without getting any gas and were jerked once by a speed bump, but we reached our hotel without incident. I later wondered how, in a vehicle built like a golf cart and in a city as pungent as Chennai, the smell of weed stayed with us so long; Julian told me that the driver had been finished off his joint during the first few minutes of our ride.   In hindsight, I wonder if what I perceived as dangerous ganja-slowed-reflex driving was simply the way the road looks from a little 3-wheeled autorickshaw in a city where lane lines, direction of traffic and traffic lights are merely advisory.

When the drive was over, we gave the driver 500 rupees, expecting 100 rupees change.  He gave us 70 rupees, with a sly smile, and when we last saw him, he'd left his autorickshaw parked in the middle of a lane and was hobbling away with the money in his hand, presumably to find a joint to replace the one that he'd been forced to finish off so quickly in order to get us home.

We said goodbye this morning to our tragic chauffeur and headed out to cosmopolitan Bombay for a half-day of seeing city sights from the comfort of our air-conditioned car.  The first delight of the city - no cows!  These are the cleanest streets I've seen in India.  Julian and I ate yummy South Indian food and walked over to get saffron-pistachio gelato afterwards. 

Heading tomorrow to Chennai with heavy bags.  We did way too much shopping in Udaipur... the only consolation is that everything we got was 1/3 to 1/10 of the price that it would have been in the States.  But do I really need 5 more pairs of shoes?