hey what’s up it’s eric! well, everybody else has gone home, so i figure i’d post a hey whats up from the beach cliff paradise of varkala. i’ve been by myself for a week or so now, ryan geoff and maia made it to cochin where we’re storing our bikes and then flew back to mumbai. i’ve been in varkala for a week just chilling out and hanging with the other tourists. it’s been awesome. i got sort of stuck here cause my bike cracked the inner transmission cover, and parts had to be ordered in from another city. pretty good place to hang our for a few days though. i picked up a black enfield 350 bullet in goa that’s run great so far, but this tranny problem needed to be fixed sooner than later, so here i’ve stayed.
so everybody else is back home safe and sound! we lost jeremy in goa due to the combination of some wretched illness and a pretty cramped schedule if we were going to make it to cochin in time for his flight. then the four of us, three bikes, rode south to cochin where the bikes were to be stored. i’ve never driven in this traffic before and i gotta say the first couple days were crazy! i can’t even begin to write about the traffic at this time because my mother might be reading this. once you get the hang of it though it’s a riot. it got fun on about day three, and we pretty much hauled ass from goa to cochin, five days of riding pretty much all day.
we made it to cochin with a day to spare, and then the others flew to mumbai and i headed south. that was the plan anyway, but come to find out the bikes actually were to be stored about an hour inland of cochin in this little town called ponkonom. well by the time we found that out, flights had been booked, and i was commissioned with the dubious task of hauling geoff and ryan’s bike plus mine to where they’re to be stored.
we got our hotel in cochin to arrange for a “truck”, but agreed to meet a couple km outside the main hotel center with the bikes, so we could avoid paying the tourist area markup which would have doubled or tripled the price. stuff like this happens all the time, things that you’d never think of running into in the states. tasks that i’m used to taking a few minutes can take hours or days. anything, as they say, is possible in india, but there are sure no guarentees on how long it will take.
so our guy shows up and we shuttle the first two bikes over to some neighborhood a few minutes away. then this “truck” shows up and it’s this little three wheeled glorified rickshaw, and i’m like oh crap.
our enfields are not what an india person might call “normal”. we all have enfield 350 rockets, which are big heavy bikes by indian standards to begin with. plus we have “india bars”, these large steel grills that protect your feet and legs and engine in the event of hitting a cow, goat, rickshaw, cement divider, or any one of the many other random obsticles that can rush out from behind something at any moment. like ryan says, it’s like a game of paperboy. the grills are essential, but they stick out off the bike another 20 cm on each side. geoff’s has a big rack and box mounted on the back for storing massive ammounts of his and maia’s stuff. it’s a really cool setup. and geoff and ryan have massive oversized petrol tanks. it’s a lot of bike. anyway, long story short we get two of them on the truck and then decide to ride mine behind. we got the bikes over to ponkonom where one of ryan’s extended family has a house and agreed to let us store them. they greeted me with a fresh coconut pulp and milk drink and some tang (yes geoff they even have hot ponkonom tang), put me up, fed me supper and breakfast and agreed to let me drop off my bike on my way back to mumbai.
so with that taken care of i cruised down to varkala and have been here ever since, just sitting around chilling out reading and eating fresh fish, tali plates, fruit drinks and the like. varkala has a beach and then this huge rock cliff covered with shops and beach resorts. apparently during the season it’s quite busy but with monsoon coming things have emptied out a bit, prices drop, humidity rises, and we get these amazing cloudy sunsets and lightening storms in the evening. the rain hasn’t hit yet but i’m hoping to catch it before i leave and then flee on my bike lest i be washed away.
i’m reading god of small things. it’s an indian author and come to find out it’s set here in the state of kerala, in a town called kotoyam just a jog north of here.
well, that’s the news. heading north tomorrow to see some tigers in a wildlife preserve. met an english bloke who’s hiring a bike and we’re going to make the trek hopefully in the morning, we’ll see how tonight goes. catch you later!
