Katrina K. Photography

Tadashi & I went to Kollam for a tour of the Kerala backwaters; we elected to go by using a dugout canoe. Apparently all the day-trip tours go the same island. Sadly, this tour felt like a ride at a theme park. You know the ride where you’re in a car, and you can pretend to drive while the car goes through different parts of the city/county/world, but really the car is just on a single track that automatically pulls you through the ride? Well, that’s what this tour felt like, except we were in a boat. Sure, we saw some wildlife;

Kerala is a long and narrow state of India, stretching from South of Mangalore, to nearly the tip of India. It goes inland to the tea plantations in the mountains ( gats ). We spent about a week in Kochi, in the middle of the state. We actually stayed in Fort Kochin. There's not a whole lot to see here, although it is a relaxing place if you stay away from the famous Chinese fishing nets. Sadly, nearly all our time her was spent in an internet cafe downloading software to fix my computer. We've since purchased "WiFi on a stick"; that is, a USB stick that uses cell phone technology to get wireless internet (made by !dea, if you're interested). With this, we get unlimited wireless thoughout India for month -- for only $10! (Plus the cost of the stick.) We spent that much at the Fort Cohin internet cafe in one week.

Arriving in Kolkata was a surprise. I had expected a loud, dirty, crazy city. But overall, it’s pretty clean & tame. Except for the traffic. Having been traveling in SE Asia for 5 years now, Tadashi and I have had a lot of experience crossing the un-regulated streets of Asia. In SE Asia, you wait for a break in traffic, then beginning slowly across. You keep a steady pace, and the traffic gauges you speed and veers either in front of you, or behind you. The cars, trucks and motor bikes will come really, really close, but they won’t hit you. The worst thing you can do in SE Asia is to stop or run. Changing speed, stopping or running can cause you to be hit. But in India, if you DON’T stop or run, you will be hit. So crossing the street here is an entirely different game. We often find ourselves running back to the sidewalk along with the locals.

The good news is: we've been in India for two weeks and neither of us has been sick yet! Talk about no good deeds going unpunished: we think we figured out why we got so sick last time we where here. We like to be responsible travelers and not use so many plastic water bottles, so we bring our own water purifier. Even though our purifier is still pretty new, Tadashi decided it would be a good idea to test it before leaving for this trip, just in case. And a good thing too! It turned out that this purifier -- although it's only been used a few times over the last few years -- wasn't completely purifying the water! AND, It was the same purifier we brought to India last time.

My computer is finally fixed! So far, almost our entire trip in India has revolved around getting this thing fixed. Unfortunately, getting a new hard drive here in India was looking to be a very bad deal indeed. First of all, it would mean not being able to recover any documents on the hard drive. Second, the warranty tech people here would only install the hard drive – not the operating system. So even then, I wouldn’t have a working computer, nor any recovered documents, and would have to pay for Windows all over again.