Gandhi Museum

Today I have a 4:35pm train to Kochi, in Kerala. I had to check out of my hotel at 8am this morning. That leaves a large chunk of time I didn't really know what to do with, since I've been to the main temple as well as the "palace" I went to yesterday afternoon, although I should probably start from there.

The palace was a well restored courtyard surrounded by large pillars, all in typical Italian style. The rest of it had been destroyed so its materials could be used in another palace by the original builder's grandson. Basically you could see the whole thing in about 2 minutes, but I stayed around a little longer so I would feel like I got my money's worth at least a little bit. After that disappointment I got myself some juice (amazing orange juice they have here, as well as pineapple) at one of the many juice stands and headed back.

For dinner I went back to the same place I've been going to for some dosas, then I went looking for something to do. I settled on getting all my pictures backed up on to DVD (which I had been meaning to do anyway), which was $2 and took a good hour and a half, which I wasn't counting on.

This morning I decided I would go to the Gandhi Museum across town. I walked the 5k and still got there at 9am, but it didn't open until 10. Some local kids who were cutting class came and talked to me, although of course their English wasn't very good from cutting class all the time. We passed the time talking, then moving underneath a random thatched room when it started to rain.

I got to the museum gates as it opened, and they sang a song, followed by some sort of Gandhi chant, then opened it up. It was a pretty nice building, but not a large museum. It followed the history of the white man (their words, not mine) oppressing India. I read pretty much everything in there, and was done in about an hour. It finished with some biography stuff on Gandhi, then the highlight, which was his blood stained clothing from when he was murdered (fun stuff!).

After hiking the 5k back to town I went for another banana leaf special lunch, then went to get some ice cream. I met some random Indian who convinced me to go to the roof of one of the shops next to the temple and see the view. It wasn't all that great and of course they tried to get me to buy stuff (no such luck for them. What am I going to do with a 4 foot tall statue?). So now I'll be going to catch that train to Kochi, which arrives at something like 3:40am tomorrow morning (that'll be fun looking for a hotel at that hour).