Wednesday, December 1, 2010

My trip to Kerala

So yesterday we traveled to Kerala, a state south of Karnataka(Karnataka is the state that I'm in now) to go see the Ayurvedic doctor. This is the world's first Ayurvedic hospital, and the main doctor there is the #1 Ayurvedic doctor in India and has received India's highest honor(like an Indian Nobel prize) He has done extensive research with cancer and has published a few papers on cancer as well. More on him in a moment.

So we left at 5 in the afternoon, we hired a driver for the trip. The driver had a diesel car, btw :P Diesel cars are pretty popular over here, which sucks because Americans want diesel cars too(Nissan makes a diesel!! for India though) So we had to get past this one check point on the highway before 9:00, since the highway goes through a forest, and the government doesn't want the wildlife to be disturbed at night. It was dark when we were going through the forest, but I did see one elephant.

After the forest stretch of highway, pretty soon we crossed over the Karnataka/Kerala border, and entered the Malabar Hills. In order to get to the bottom of the hill and back to normal highways, we had to go down the side of a mountain. Indian driving may be bad, but Indian driving+darkness+mountain driving=pretty damn scary. Since this was the main way between states, there was a lot of truck traffic, as well as buses. Its scary when the oncoming trucks and buses look like they're going to hit you at every turn, and in addition to many normal turns, there are nine hairpin curves. And these roads were built with minimum funds, since the engineers cut corners and pocketed the extra money, the roads are in poor condition. It reminds me of that episode of the Simpsons when the potholes in town were so big they were swallowing cars. What was cool though is when the car on the side close to the barrier, you could see the town down in the valley; we were really high up so the lights looked really cool.

So when we got down(finally) we went to Calicut, the city where we were planning on spending the night. When we got to Calicut we spent almost an hour asking where this certain hotel was, and we finally found it around midnight. It looked like a nice hotel except for the fact(and we never thought of this) I didn't have my passport. There's a police order in Calicut(and other cities) than foreigners cannot stay in hotels without their passports, since they're trying to track everybody's movements. They wouldn't accept a faxed copy of my passport so we ended up going to a hotel down the street who didn't ask for it. It wasn't as nice as the other hotel but it was tolerable, we had a sheet to put on the bed. We got about 4 hours of sleep before we had to get up and get ready again.

The town we were going to was about 4 hours away from Calicut(I don't remember the name of it) I dozed most of the way, so I don't remember it. I do remember seeing a cattle auction in some suburb of Calicut, they were selling what appeared to be breeding stock for this cow that sort of looked like a mini brown water buffalo. I also learned that auto-rickshaws are very versatile. I saw somebody sitting in the back of one with two goats :P

When we got to the hospital, it was sort of off the beaten path. I didn't take any pictures because Mukthi had my camera(I had given it to her the night before when I had to use a public bathroom) But the hospital was very beautiful. The Malabar region in general is very beautiful, there are soooo many palm trees and its very hilly and rocky. What is cool is in the hospital compound, there was a fenced in area inside where they grew the herbs that they used in all of their medicines, and Mukthi said they have many acres more of herbs that they used in their preparations. Mukthi's father commented that the mosquitoes were huge, probably due to the plentiful super herbs :P

So at the hospital, before you see the doctor you get to consult with a secretary and in short tell him(or her) all of your problems, present and past, which you wish to be addressed to the doctor. These are, of course, written down in a file. Then you had to wait your turn to see the doctor.

They had several doctors at the hospital, there is a different doctor there every day. The doctor that we saw only comes once a week, on Tuesdays, and the rest of the week he spends traveling around the entire country, only spending Sundays at his home. When I went into the room to see the doctor, he sits at a long table with about five or six other people; I'm not sure what they all do but one person reads from the patient file, and another person writes down the doctor's prescriptions. The doctor spoke English, but to be honest, I couldn't understand him that well because his accent was really thick. I got the gist of what he was saying though. He asked me a few questions about what I told the secretary, then prescribed accordingly. Because I didn't understand the doctor as well as I wanted to, I was worried that I didn't give enough information. Mukthi explained to me afterwards though that he is such a good doctor, that just by looking at you he can usually tell you what is the matter with you. Facial features are enough to be able to tell what a person's doshic* constitution is, which I thought was super cool.

*for those of you who don't know, Ayurveda treats according to what a person's doshic constitution. There are three different doshas: kapha, pitta and vata, and each constitution has a list of emotional and physical qualities. Different diseases are also related to specific doshas. Again, its hard to explain in a nutshell!


They have the pharmacy on the front side of the building where consultations are. I got two months supply of medicine(almost a dozen bottles of things) for $30, and the consultation was a few dollars. According to Mukthi, this hospital likes to stay low key, so that it can remain a mainly charitable organization, helping those that want to use the medicine for curative purposes rather than enhancing health. Therefore, they make the medicines and consultations affordable to poorer patients, making very little money in the process.

Another cool thing is that they medicines are made with herbs they grow themselves, using the same methods that were used 5000 years ago. The medicines take months to make, but in the end, they have a product that is unique only to them. You can only buy their medicines if they are prescribed to you, because all of these medicines are unique to each dosha type. You cannot buy extra medicine, only what you need, and you cannot buy medicine for another person(like to refill a prescription) They do this, again, because it is a charitable organization.

So afterwards we ate out; I only ate rice because I wasn't feeling well enough to eat spicy food, and Mukthi advised against eating certain foods out. Then we went home.

Its really hard to try and describe trips from one place to another, because there is so so so much that you see. From awesome houses, to temples, mosques, churches, roadside shops etc you can't describe it all. In the Malabar region though we saw a lot of rice patties and lumber mills. Another thing about traveling through India by car is that the main highways are only two-lanes, so you really feel like you're going on a back road through the forest.

When we got back to Malabar Hills it was dusk, so seeing the sun set over the mountains was a breathtaking sight. I got pictures, they're sort of grainy but its better than nothing. Going up the mountain in the dark was just as scary as going down the mountain in the dark.

I was so tired by the time we got back to Mysore at a quarter after 10. I hadn't slept much, I dozed in the car and that was about it. I slept in until 9 this morning. I start my medicine tomorrow when I can do it when I'm supposed to.

So I have have this bitter ghee to take in the morning at 6 AM, two alcoholic preparations to take after lunch and dinner, and a mixture of honey and herbs to take before I go to bed. Also I have two kinds of oil to apply over my body a couple times a week(according to Mukthi they are for pitta-vata)

So that was my crazy two day trips to Kerala.

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