Churches, mosques, and temples of South India - Mosques

About 24% of Keralans are muslims. Here are the mosques in Vizhinjam (just south of Kovalam Beach) and Odayam (just north of Varkala).

Churches, mosques, and temples of South India - Churches

Here are some churches we came across in Mysore, Bangalore, Trivandrum, and Kanyakumari. There seem to be lots of Christians in South India, about 19% in Kerala according to Wikipedia, and they're clearly often devout too.

I'm a cow and I own the place

And they really do seem to. This was in the grounds of the Sri Chamundeswari Temple near Mysore, but all over India, in villages and sometimes in quite big cities, you come across them roaming the streets, clearly revelling in their time honoured entitlements.

Kerala trains and buses

Train or bus? If there's a choice, you usually go for the train. They cost very little, they're faster than buses, they're moderately predictable, and sometimes on time, and if you book in advance and go for the most expensive class available, they can offer a fair degree of comfort. It's also essential for every traveller to experience train travel - so important is it to India's life and soul. We travelled AC Chair class from Calicut to Ernakulam, and 2AC sleeper class from Varkala to Kottayam.

For the Ernakulam to Trivandrum leg of the trip the trains were all booked out. So we took a bus. We were advised to go for the air conditioned Volvo service, and after a fair bit of confusion and faulty advice from the bus staff, we did manage to secure the last two seats on it. (This was just before Christmas, and a peak travelling season). The first of the buses pictured here is air conditioned in the traditional Indian way, by virtue of its unglazed windows, but the lower one is the genuine article.

It was in fact a comfortable bus, physically speaking. The main drawback was the horror movie being shown. It was called 'View out of the front window', and it featured dozens of close calls with grizzly death scenes - our own. Of all the homicidal/suicidal road user maniac subclasses, the bus driver subclass is the scariest. We charged down the middle of the two-lane road, sending all other traffic scattering in every direction, sometimes right off the road. Occasionally our game of chicken failed us, and we would  screech suddenly to a halt. Even one of  the local Hindu pilgrims on board couldn't take any more, and started loudly chastising the driver at one point.

We were very relieved to arrive in one piece in Trivandrum. But I can't help wondering about the perceived safety of our train rides. Could it be that on a train you just can't see out the front? Maybe if you could, it would be just as scary as a bus ride?!!

Where three seas meet?

I'm looking at my Comprehensive Times Atlas of the World, and it almost works. They've marked the Arabian Sea, the Indian Ocean, and the Bay of Bengal. But do they really come together at Kanyakumari (Cape Comorin), the southernmost point of mainland India? The tourist slogan says they do, and it's rumoured they even sell presentation boxes with sand of three colours, from the relevant three beaches, though we didn't see any of these.

The trouble is, when you look at a larger scale map, like my 1:2,500,000 Marco Polo 'India', you see that the only sea that's right there actually goes by the name of the Lakshadweep Sea.

Whatever the detail around that, Kanyakumari is a spectacular place. That applies especially for the peak holiday and Pilgrimage season between Christmas and New Year, when we were there. What a massive crowd! Most of them wanted to see the sunset and the sunrise, visit the ghats and the big Hindu temple, and take the ferry out to the offshore structures that commemorate the Tamil poet Thiruvalluvar and the Hindu apostle Swami Vivekananda. There's also a Gandhi memorial building, where some of his ashes are stored.

Mostly we just wandered around, enjoying the colour and the crowds.

Bangalore market scenes

Here are a few scenes from the main Krishnarajendra (City) Market in Bangalore.















Markets are always colourful and photogenic places. I love them!

Catch of the day?

In Kerala's Fort Cochin, perhaps the biggest tourist attractions are the photogenic shore operated lift nets, or 'Chinese fishing nets'. They are big cantilevered contraptions, operated typically by six men, and through the day they lower and raise their big nets in the hope of catching an odd fish that has swum by. The fresh fish are usually sold there on the waterfront, and maybe cooked up straight away at a nearby restaurant.


It looks hard work, and often there's not a single fish in the net. So they go through the process several hundred times a day, and presumably make a living out of it.

There again, the fish are not the only catch. When we were invited onto one of them and got to watch the whole process from centre stage, it was a spectacular experience. When we were asked for a donation afterwards, we

complied willingly. It had been well worth the money, and from the fishermen's point of view we were probably the main catch. The single fish they pulled out that time wouldn't have fetched them very much.