"If you don't know where you're going, any road will take you there."

April 8, Chennamkary
I’m exhausted. Today my day began with the realization that my cell phone, which I had used to set my alarm on, had died in the night and I had slept way longer than I was supposed to. I jumped up, with five minutes to go before Nithin was scheduled to come and help me take my bags down to wait for the bus. I had a freezing cold shower, threw my clothes on, and somehow made it with enough time. Thank God for my morning aerobics classes at Shanti Bhavan – my body’s clock was set for 6:25 a.m. In a rare moment of something happening conveniently in India, the bus I was catching back to Cochin (to catch the bus to Alleppey to catch the ferry to Chennamkary), stopped at the bottom of the Dew Drops driveway. We flagged it down and Nithin jumped on with me in order to help me get a seat, settle my bags, and to tell the conductor where I was getting off. Don’t worry, I gave him a large tip and a grateful good-bye. I had a primo seat right behind the driver and my bags had been placed where they didn’t take up seats, but where I could keep my eye on them. I was extremely happy with the arrangement, until I noticed my seatmate, Hacking-Coughing Woman. HCW was a wrinkled brown raisin of a person, with a green saree and bare feet. She seemed to be asleep, and she was clutching a dirty white plastic box. I wondered what the box was for, and moments later my questions were answered when she opened her eyes, coughed directly in my face (no covering of the mouth, of course), and then opened her box to spit a large glop of yellow mucus into it. Perfect.
There was nowhere else to sit, and I was not about to stand for five hours, so I turned my head away and tried to pretend it wasn’t happening. HCW, however, was determined to remain a part of my bus experience. She had now fallen back asleep, but instead of leaning against the side of the bus, or putting her head on the bag she had on the seat next to her, she leaned on me. The bus was swerving from side to side on some particularly curvy mountain roads and so I had some opportunities to slyly push her off of me when the bus went to the right, but as soon as it veered back, she was on me like curry on rice. I don’t think it was accidental, she was trying to lay her head on my shoulder. I’m sure I have now contracted a vast number of communicable diseases. This power struggle lasted for about a half hour, and by the grace of Krishna, she got off the bus and I miraculously had the seat to myself for a few hours. I did, however, smear hand sanitizer all over my arm, the seat, and the side of my head. Irrational, I know, but it made me feel a little better.
The rest of the ride was pretty unremarkable, with the exception of about an hour when I had a Muslim woman’s butt in my face. I was let off at the bus station in Cochin and somehow immediately found the right bus that would take me to Alleppey. I got a seat there too and the ride was blissfully short – only about two hours. Phase Three of the journey involved the public ferry to the tiny village where I would be spending the final days of my trip (oh God, try not to freak out…pretend you’re not going home soon). After being stopped about forty times by men trying to get me to take their houseboats or stay at the hotels that would give them commission, I got to the ferry station, where no one knew what I was talking about. I kept asking which ferry went to Chennamkary, and they all tried to tell me where the boat to Kumarakom, a popular tourist destination, was. I finally found the one man in India who could understand me and he pointed to the boat directly in front of me and said it was leaving. Now.
In a panic, I threw my bags onto it and jumped on just as it was about to pull away. Now, by this point, I was in a really rotten mood. I had been on buses and rickshaws and lugging my now extremely heavy and unwieldy bags around for the last seven hours and I was sweaty and hungry and hating travel. I was in no state to be nice to anyone, but I had to smile at the ferry conductor when I handed him my 5 rupees (ten cents) for the hour and fifteen minute ride and ask him to pretty please tell me when Chennamkary came up because there was no signage of any kind on any of the tiny docks we approached.
During this time, I was trying to call my homestay to find out where I went when I was dumped off the boat in the middle of nowhere, but I discovered that I was unable to dial an Indian number on my cell phone. I stuck it in my pocket and figured I would keep trying when I got there. The conductor gave me the signal and I moved up to the front of the boat to get off at what I thought would look like a small village. All I saw when I stepped off the dock was a dirt path along the water and a ramshackle little house covered with trees. I started to panic. I sat down for a few minutes to re-group and try to call Thomas (the owner of the Homestay) again. When it became clear that my cell phone plan hadn’t changed in the last ten minutes, I stuck the phone back in my pocket and saddled up my bags, and headed down the path. Another guy who got off the ferry with me had gone that way, so figured there must be something there. I dragged myself for about a hundred feet and nothing was appearing. I began to contemplate walking into someone’s house and asking them, when a tiny old woman came out of her front door and stared at me. I must have looked ridiculous, sweaty, covered with luggage (next time I’m getting one of those giant backpacks), and breathing like a fat man after a flight of stairs. I mustered up all my verbal skills and asked, “English?” She shook her head, but I didn’t want to give up on the one human contact I had, so I persevered. “Greenpalm Homestay? Thomas?” She smiled and pointed up the path. “Fie minute.” Hooray! It existed and I was close. A few minutes later I saw the sign and turned into a lovely little complex where I saw two white girls sitting on a front porch. I was home!