Kerala

This weekend I decided to get away from noisy and hyperactive Bangalore for a trip to Cochin in Kerala. The trip was pretty quick this time as I flew, 1 thing you'll notice quickly with India domestic flights is that the service quality is extremly nice (cute and smily flight assistants included :).Second thing is that I took an airline operated by the biggest beer manufacturer of India, but hopefully the ATR was flown by a sober pilot.
I am waiting this from a cyber, waiting for my plane back to Bangalore, so you'll be waiting for pictures a little more ! Yesterday I had a trip around Fort Cochin, successively ruled by the portugeses, the dutchs and the brits, followed by a boat cruise around the backwaters. No engine noise to trouble the quiteness of the ride in the middle of coconut "fields", here they use bamboo sticks to push the boats around. Don't expect to go far but the ride is still great.

Today I went to visit an elephant training place and some waterfalls. I wasn't as lucky as yesterday as it did rain heavily almost all day (yes I know, it's monsoon period, but I still had hopes). So I got soaked and muddy but the tour was still enjoyable.
The little "annecdote" of the day happened after the driver told me about what they called "arak" here. In the middle east that is a strong anis alcool, so I wanted to see what it was exactly here. When I asked him to get some I didn't realize exactly what I was asking for :). Alcool production is illegal in this state, mainly to fight rampant alcoolism. So we ended up roaming in the villages asking around if we could fill our bottle of water with arak for a few roupies. Obviously my driver being well dressed, hair cut, and nice shoes got mistaken for a policeman by most of the persons he asked to, but eventualy we found a group of men that were ready to help, probably drunk enough to not care much :). So I got this precious arak ! This is obviously a sugar cane distillate (tastewise it looks like it s above 40%), but the interresting part is that it is mixed with cashew nut tree fruits (the part that is not the nut) giving it a pretty sweet taste. In 2 monthes I've been able to get illegal "puro de cana" in Puyo equador and Arak from Cochin vincinity to be added to my collection of rhums, Yummeeeee!
So I got some indian "hot" water in my bag, as well as a huge pack of various spices and coconut oil grabbed directly at the exit of the mill, as well as lots of tastes and reciepes in mind and on paper.

PS: still no moon pictures, but moonsoon pictures soon (ok jeu de mots a 2 balles). Anyway the rain has eaten the moon here.
PPS: et pour les mauvaises langues, je suis sorti du trou noir !

Looking for the moon ?

Well, I have some nice moon shots but they are on my computer at home (sad excuse I know...) so Mr Little Orange Monkey will have to wait a little bit more before seeing the moon here.
To fifille: I will not publish such compromising pictures ! Imagine, people that do know me might get on this page :)...
And Jyby, the weather was so hot that I could barely carry myself around, so I don't see myself carrying a giant bunny around :). I was emptying coconuts every other block, and the rest of the time that was sugar cane juice with lemon (and it was non distillated sugar cane, for those that would pretend otherwise :).
In the mean time, one more shot from Pondichery to enjoy.

Pondichery

I took advantage of the weekend to go to Pondichery (ex french "comptoir" in India) and Chennai (Madras). I spent quite some time on the road as the traffic always ends up being pretty slow here. That was a pretty nice trip but I got cooked by the heat :).
I didnt meet anyone fluent in french in Pondichery, however everybody was pretty proud to make me hear their few french words. Finally, I didn't met any non indian for 2 days despite going to places I thought were touristic.

On Chennai beach, being the only tourist in the middle of thousands of indians led to pretty funny situations. I basically got stopped every 100m by groups of youg indian boys trying to get pictures of me with them (holding my hands or hugging me). The first time I thought that I met the gay indian community (they were also commenting on how cute i was... etc, it was pretty odd), but after the 5th or 6th group of youg men, asking for my email adress or those pictures, I think that they just don't have the same social codes than us on that subject, and that it was their way of being nice and chatting a bit with the only foreigner around. But well, I had a few good laugh, especially when I was changing my pants and a group of them came to shake my hand and hug me while I had only one leg on :). Done for the laughing part for today, and sorry no moon pictures, they were too blurry.

Bang alors !

Yeah, I am back in Bangalore India for a while (for work). I am enjoying the trip, meeting new people, making new discoveries, eating new stuff... 2 days ago returning to my room the sunset was fantastic, enjoy the natural colors of Airport road in Bangalore around 6:30.

Is this blog dead ?

No, well not really. I have been pretty busy with work and travels and also I started to get pessimistic about politics in the middle east and didn't really felt like making long posts to try to express these feelings, hoping secretly I would be wrong (despite hating being proved wrong as those who know me would tell you).
So what's been going on ? A few monthes back new governments were elected on both the Palestinian side and the Israeli side.
In Palestine Hamas was elected partially because of it's agenda, partially as a protest against the corruption of the ruling Fatah and the never-improving situation. I was expressing some hopes that this new government would lead to positive changes but until now, a combination of international and Israeli pressure and refusal to act for change ended up in a serious degradation of the situation. Palestine is on the edge of a civil war, the strong disagrements between 2 heavily armed factions that do not manage to converge their opinions are a serious risk. And on the other side the western world by indirectly stopping the salaries of the security forces knew they were going to increase the instability. What are unpayed policemen ending up doing to feed their families ? Begging or shutting up ? No way...
In Israel, Olmert was elected with Sharon's aura and program, but not with the expected majority. He ended up building a government that seem to work for now at least. His agenda is to leave some settlements in the west bank and keep some others without negotiating with the palestinians, because supposedly of the Hamas presence at the government. Gaza withdrawal was unilateral and could be so because it was a withdrawal to the green line, the internationnaly "recognized" border for gaza. So it was kind of OK to not negotiate the conditions of the withdrawal. The story for the west bank is very different (the problem is very different also). They have to negociate at some point, just because they will fondamentally disagree on the withdrawal line. You can see this plan in at least 2 ways: by removing the most frictional outposts Olmert will only improve the situation in the area. At least he is giving back some things. Or, he is doing that to keep the rest of the west bank forever, which is what he claims (he would not get wide support in his country if he was saying otherwise).

In the end evacuating the 400000 israelis living in the west bank is not going to happen that easily, whatever the palestinian militant groups (like Hamas) want. I do believe that by negociation they could manage to get progressive and further disengagement from the west bank by steps, instead of refusing to deal with Israel and getting Olmert to remove a few hard to defend outposts and fortify massively the rest and define it as "permanently" in Israel.

So, Palestine is getting worse, and is also loosing more and more support from the international community and public opinion. I am convinced that if they don't get ready to drop a few things from their requests, they will end up even worse than today, but courage and pride will probably keep blocking many peace efforts there, and I do not expect Israel to be the one that will have to make concessions seeing how the situation evolves.