Cooking Holiday

Hi All,
We just finished a 7 day cooking holiday in Kerela. It was a lot of fun and exhausting. During the day we did some activities and at night we learned how to cook some great dishes.

Some of the activities we did are:
-market tour
-walk around the area identifying fruit and spice plants.
-trip to tea plantations
-seeing how some sweets are made
-taking a boat ride on the river
and my personal favorite...
-bathing baby elephants and riding an elephant

The dishes we learned to cook ran a good range with different kinds of curries, some yogurt-based dishes, a vegetable stew and some breads.
I'm realizing the beauty of Indian food is that it's so insanely carb-heavy. What makes the food special is all the different types of breads you can eat it with. In the west we're familiar only with naan, but that's only the tip of the iceberg here. Here you have a wide of array of breads and dumplings and different styles of rice.

After exploring the rest of the Kerala region we have moved on and we're now exploring the Tamil Nadu region. The last couple days we've spent in Madurai and Trichy and have been getting a good education on how things are done in the Hindu society. We've visited several temples and today we got decided to get a tour with a proper guide. Well worth it, because there is so much imagiry and customs and things we've never seen before that it was great to get a breakdown and have our questions answered. There are a lot of nuisances to the Hindu culture that it's hard to understand it all.
For instance the caste system, that most Hindus in south India adhere to, is very complicated. As far as marriage, a man can't just walk up to any woman on the street or in a bar, ask her out, form a relationship and get married. That would be too easy and in India everything is hard. An eligible bachloer's parents have to ask around within his caste (and there are literally thousands of different castes) if there are any elligible females. The rules for eligability are vast. First and foremost the girl has to be within his caste. He can't marry up and he can't marry down. Next, the man and woman's astrological signs have to be compatable and for this either parents have to meet with an astrologer. If an eligible woman exists, the bachloer gets a picture of her and if he likes what he sees he agrees to meet. After one meeting he'll either say "yes i'll marry" or "no thank you. hey dad, find me another one."

Indian gender differences
I'd like to point out some vast differences between genders in India. Of course I'm speaking in generalities so keep in mind there are always exceptions when applying broad observations to sex and race.

The Woman:
Hindu and Buddhist cultures worship the lotus flower becuase it grows best in the muddy and murky waters and blooms with a perfectly balanced shape. This, as it's said, reflects the nature of what us humans should strive to do. Although I've never read or heard it anywhere, I think Indian women (Hindu, Muslim or whatever) strive, in dress and action, to represent a lotus flower. What I mean by this is; out of the dusty, grimy, loud, desiel fumes, shit, piss and whatever else on the streets; an Indian woman strides through it all, the bright and brilliant colours of her sari (or salwar kameez) always clean and shining. Indian woman are a proud people always walking shoulds back, chin up, spine straight as an arrow always looking diginified and composed. The look in thier eyes is pointed and determined as if in full concentration of what they're doing.
The more dignified of the lot will rarely stare at us as most men do. Their eyes will glance at me for a moment taking in my obviuos non-Indian-ness, then quickly to move to Gay. They'll stare at her for a little longer because I think the Western woman holds a certain amount of allure and mystique to Indian women.
One day, in Daramshala, I had lunch with one of my Tibetan students named Kenchuk. He's a young guy in his early 20's and since it was just the 2 of us boys of course the subject of woman came up. So I said:
"Do you want to marry a Tibetan girl?"
(His English was not very good, so I'm going to 'help' his answers a little)
"No, I don't want to marry a Tibetan girl. My first choice is Japanese and if that doesn't work-out, an American girl would be fine."
"What about an Indian girl?"
"No! Indian women are scary!!"
I can see why Kenchuk would think that, because of what could be thought of as a cold look in their eye. But I think it's more like pride in being a woman and a concentration in carrying herself properly.

The Men:
The men have a certain style of their own. As far as dress is concerned I would classify it as "70's corny". Bell-bottoms seem to be a big hit in the north and when a man becomes of age he does what all Indian men do and he grows a mustache. 95% of all Indian men have moustaches and that's not an exhagerated statistic. When a man gets married he typically loses the bell bottoms and grows a massive belly. The belly also is a source of pride for the men as they'll do things to make it stick out like wear tight shirts or tuck in thier pants and hike the pants up to mid belly (or a combination of all the above). Miraculously, they are able to grow a belly without having the rest of their body get fat.
Young men are a vain group and they'll utilize every opportunity to check themselves out. Sometimes when young men stare at us it's not like they're saying "Hey, your a foriegner, I'm curious about you." It's more like they're saying "Hey, your a forigener. How good do I look to you?"
Young men also have an insatiable urge to harass western women. Which can be dangerous. Our guide book is peppered with warnings like "Woman should not walk alone here..." or "Woman will find it annoying when men..." So it can be a little frightening, as I'm sure Gay will attest, when men stare a little too long.

Next...
We have about 3 weeks left on our India visa so we'll spend some more time in the south and then go up to a northern city called Varanasi which is one of the holiest places in Hinduism. After the education we just got I'm looking forward to it. After that we'll go to the big city of Calcutta and fly back to south east asia where we'll spend another 1.5 months touring around.


Pictures....
This first set is from our Kerala cooking class. The first 3 days we spent with a nice couple from New Zealand so you'll see them in a couple pictures. The pictures are not only of the cooking but some activities we did as mentioned above.

Next set is from our visit to Fort Kochin. The man with the crazy face painting is a performer of Kathikali dance. A pretty wild dance form that told stories using a lot of exagerated face and body movements.

This last set is from Mumbai and Trichy which has proven to be an education in Hinduism. Hindu temples are very animated and there's a lot of noise and interesting looking people running around. The temples you see are an example of Dravidian architecture.