Travel and Dealing with the Little Things.
It never fails. Dave and I never have smooth travels. Everyone else seems to hop on busses and trains with ease, catch their taxis without fail and be on their way in an instant.
Not us. Now I am not complaining, our problems are always very trivial and everything always seems to work out, but we tend to get there the hard way.
Here is a list of what went wrong on our first excursion in India and then how they rectified themselves.
What Went Wrong
1. Got on wrong train car and had to stand. Everyone else seemed to find their car just fine. Train travel is intimidating in India. The long train lines with at least 20 cars stopped for about 2 minutes. We started walking one way to try to find which car to get on and as we were searching, the train started to pull away. We hopped on the first one that was in front of us and hoped for the best.
2. Our rickshaw driver didn’t show up at train station. It seemed like everything was going to go well at first. Our driver arrived at 6:00 am sharp to pick us up from Skylark Guest House in Varkala, but upon arrival in Alleppey, we were left stranded.
I know what your thinking, why couldn’t we just take another rickshaw? Well, we didn’t know the name of the tour operator we were meeting to catch our houseboat to the back waters.
3. We didn’t hire an air-conditioned boat because we are cheap. Fans always work fine for us and besides, it is easier to get used to the climate if you don’t go from extreme cold to extreme hot all the time. Well, part way through our trip, the fan stopped working. Our captain and chef were perplexed as they tried to fix it and we had to settle on baking in the heat.
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4. Missed our ride. Our tour operator from Alleppey promised to meet us in the morning after our cruise to take us to our next guest house, Palmy Lake Resort. We arrived and he wasn’t there.
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How it all turned out
1. Luckily the trains are slow to start and there was time for both of us to make it on safely. We asked a few people if they knew where we were supposed to go, but nobody recognized the ticket number. They were eager to try to help though.
After standing for a little bit, we found a seat captain. He looked up our names in his thick passenger log and he showed us to our seats. Our seats were in the car that we were standing in! Our ticket said SL1 57 and 58. We were in car SR1 and our seat numbers were 88, 89. Don’t ask me how that happened. I still have no idea how to read a ticket. We were just happy to be sitting.
Lesson learned. Just get on the train as fast as you can, you don’t have a lot of time between stops. And when you are getting off of the train, keep an eye out for your stop. They don’t announce anything and once again, you have about 2 minutes to grab your pack and head out the door.
2. The rickshaw drivers at the station were very helpful contrary to their reputation. They looked at our boat ticket and called
The Rickshaw
our guy back in Varkala. They then came back and told us that they would take us to our company. Well, of course we didn’t believe them, so we made a call ourselves from the booth at the train station.
We called Nithyananda in Varkala ourselves and he informed us that our rickshaw broke down en route and that the guy that told us that he would take us is actually telling the truth. So in we hopped with the driver.
Nithyananda called us 3 more times to make sure that we were O.K. and the people at the tour company took great care of us. They came to the boat with us to make sure that we were happy with our accommodations and they told us that they would be back tomorrow. That wasn’t even part of the package, they just wanted to make sure that we were O.K. And happy.
3. The fan broke down late in the day and luckily we turned into a headwind that cooled us down. It rained during dinner and cooled everything down nicely. And at least our fan worked perfectly in our room.
The fan that broke was an outside fan on deck to keep us comfortable during the journey.
4. It turned out that Palmy Lake Resort was only a 1 km walk from where our boat let us off. We had a very short walk and we were relaxing within 15 minutes.
Our tour operator came by about an hour later to apologize for being late and left us his card. He wanted to make sure that we were happy with our tour and to see if we needed anything else.
Note: he wasn’t trying to sell us anything else, he just wanted to see if we needed anything else. He then recommended a place for lunch and was on his way.
Moral of the Story
All in all, we had an excellent experience during our Backwater houseboat cruise. We will tell you all about it tomorrow, but for now we just wanted to share with you the experiences that we seem to encounter on a regular basis.
If you just stay relaxed and go with the flow everything always works out.
- Information
Varkala: Om Shanthi Tours – Beside Cafe italiano, North Cliff Beach
Contact:Nithyananda – omshantietours@gmail.comAlleppey: King Fisher Tours
Contact: Manu – manojvembanad@gmail.comCost:
- Houseboat tours from Varkala to Alleppey
4500 Rupees ($104 Canadian) for 2 people
Includes transfers from Skylark Guest house to train station
Train from Varkala to Alleppey (2 ½ hours)
Transfers from Train to Kingfisher Tours
Transfers Kingfisher Tours to boat
22 hours on boat with 3 meals, personal chef and captain.
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Travel and Dealing with the Little Things.
Great advice! I am definitely going to have to maintain a more relaxed approach while we travel… but it’s going to be a huge adjustment from trying to be super efficient during our previous vacations. Thanks for the tips on India. Luckily, we have some time to mentally prepare ourselves before we get there!
mina´s last blog ..you don’t have to put on the red light
Ahhh, the joys of travelling! Gotta have the good with the bad. But that’s the reason I travel. The disaster stories (or the things that don’t go quite right)are always the best ones. That’s why I go travelling – so I don’t run out of dinner party conversations!
The Travel Tart´s last blog ..Travel DK Guides – Undiscovered Cities And Win Travel Guides And Maps!
Love it! The trials and tribulations of travel–especially in India–are always worth sharing. Hope both of you are doing well.
Alan´s last blog ..Sunday Sandbox: Feats for a Cause
Ah the Indian trains – I had those same moments scratching my head and wondering which train car! What luck that you were in the right one
Shannon OD´s last blog ..A little tour…It’s raining on Uluru
Shannon! So glad to hear that you had the same situation. Everyone looked like they knew exactly what they were doing and we couldn’t figure out a thing. I have no idea how we got on the right car in that long line of cars. We wondered if he just shoved us in an open seat, but then again…we saw our names on his list with the seat numbers beside them. Dumb luck I guess.
I love the happy ending to the problems you were facing! We didn’t get the air-conditioned boat either…we survived with LOTS of bug spray!
Jennifer @ Approach Guides´s last blog ..Top Three Favorite Restaurants: Florence, Italy
Hi Jennifer. Thanks, and like I said, we never have too big of problems so we really can’t complain. but we do always laugh at how smooth everyone else’s travels seem while we always seem to struggle a little. Our favorite point that we notice is that we always get the “shit” bus as Dave would say. We can buy our tickets from the same company as everyone else, but when it comes time to get on our bus, other people have tickets for beautiful luxury coaches and then our ratty rust bucket pulls up behind them all. They all go on their merry way and we wonder what we did wrong:)
What an adventure already!
Glad everything works out for the best. I just found out that my brother and my mom (who is already 67) will go to India (I don’t remember which part) in a couple weeks.. Oh!! You can tell how jealous I am of them. 
Amy @ The Q Family´s last blog ..Legoland California With Kids
Wow Amy. That is going to be amazing for your brother and mother. Good for her to keep the travel to exotic destinations going strong! You must have them write some guest posts on your blog so I can read all about it.
I’m glad everything worked out for you! Don’t worry you are definitely not the only one. These type of things happen ALL the time to me. Usually I roll with it until I reach the breaking point which usually ends with me taking out the frustrations by walking around with a giant scowl, swearing and throwing my bag off my back. Then Randy walks in a different direction to pretend he doesn’t know me. hahahaha…. For some bizarre reason he has the patience of a saint. Can’t wait to hear more about your trip!
Bethany´s last blog ..Somewhere In Time – Oaxaca, Mx
Haha! You sound exactly like Dave and I. Dave can go with the flow in any situation. He rarely worries either. I always say that I do enough worrying for the two of us, so he doesn’t have to. I have done the old, throw the back off my back thing in the past myself. It just feels so good to give it a heave.
Agh! Well hey, it gave you something to write about.
And thanks for the link love!
Loved it! Glad it all worked out like most things in life
Waiting to hear more about your trip!
Candice had the same thought I did as I was reading your post – if everything went perfectly smoothly, there would be much less to write about, and it wouldn’t be nearly as interesting!
How nice it is to know that the people in India are so warm and friendly – it says a lot about a culture when nearly everyone you meet is willing to help you out in some way.
Trisha Miller´s last blog ..eBook Review: Just What Works: Write Right Online
Trisha, you are so write. Now that we keep a blog, I am always just looking into how to turn it into a story. It can be a lot of fun to re-live the moment and it sound so much more romantic when you write it down than while you are actually living it in the moment.
Nicely done! I’ve got a task for you while beeing in India! Find out how to read train tickets! (&maybe share it with other traveldudes)
That is what I love about traveling…. you have a problem and suddenly it just goes all the right way… as long you just take it as comes and think positive. Well done & keep enjoying India!
Melvin´s last undefined ..If you register your site for free at
Hi Melvin. As a matter a fact, I have a post coming out in a couple of days on how to read the tickets. You must be clairvoyant. I will put together some tips for theTraveldudes in the coming weeks as I learn more about train travel. We tend to ask a lot of questions and I am never afraid to embarrass myself, so we will get the answer one way or another. Those train tickets can be very confusing. Whenever we ask people that are from India questions, they seem just as confused as we are:)
Hi Guys
We met briefly at the station in Varkala, both on our way to catch a houseboat in Alleppy, your experience was much the same as mine. Wish I were still there although the UK’s very pretty at the moment having been scattered with snow and alight with a very bright and low slung sun.
Have a fab Christmas.
Paul
Paul, so nice to hear from you! We will be spending Christmas in Mumbai, it will be interesting for sure. Good to hear that we had a similar experience. It is always interesting to know what others thought of the same tour. Hope you enjoyed the rest of your trip in India! Cheers.
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