Sun Clod

Cherai Beach under the evil beating sun

        I have never been much of a sun worshipper, never seeing that much fun in lying immobile for hours on end seeking a crisp even brown. Instead I walk around in my shirts and shorts playing the role of the modest Englishman abroad perenially uncomfortable in the ever increasing heat.
The penalty of this as the weeks have passed is an ever more profound t-shirt tan. My face, arms and legs turn deeper and deeper shades while my torso remains lilly white. The impression is of a half baked cookie. And sure enough the ridicuolous reflection in the mirror one morning pricked my vanity and I decided I had to do something about it.
I hatched a simple plan. I would use my usual nuclear strength factor 35 cream on my already tanned parts and apply some freshly bought Indian brand factor 15 on my pale sickly areas. Surely I would even out into a rough approximation of a bronzed God?
Things started out swimmingly on Cherai beach just outside Kochi. The sun was bright and powerful, a cool breeze came in off the sea, the sand sparsely populated by tourists and picturesquely fringed by large swaying coconut palms. Contendedly I settled on a mat and began a book while anticipating my appealing trasformation, turning from belly to back and vice versa every 15 minutes or so.
Later after going on a long shirtless rambling walk I began to feel a little heat on my shoulders. I told myself nothing was wrong with this, just a bit of a reaction. But a rising doubt nagged my mind, and once I returned to my flat I inspected myself in the bathroom mirror with trepedation.
To my horror bright and toxic radioactive red stretched from the nape of my neck to my belt line. On turning I saw my back was the same unnatural shade. Well, the same shade apart from a neat white palm print that starkly sat on my left shoulder blade. I could even make out the grooves of fingerprints as clear as if you took them in ink. I suppose I must have put a my hand with the factor 35 accidently on there when I was applying. Gah!
It's now five days later and this unfortunate piece of body art remains with the lobster tan. Needless to say here in Varkala I watch the beach from afar, fully clothed and sipping on my tea in a modest British way, contemplating that perhaps Indian suntan lotion is made for people with darker skin than I.....

Church and Communism, Kerala, and the National Government

The Red flag flying high

Political poster by a ferry stop

The Hammer and Sickle

The church where Vasco De Gama was buried

A riverside Catholic school

         Kerala is an interesting mix. It has pride in having the first and most enduring freely elected communist government in the world. The Hammer and Sickle are printed on ubiquotous red flags and are emblazoned on concrete monuments. Politics is loudly expressed by burly mustachioed men on microphones on street corners to crowds of gathered luchtimers. But also the Catholic church looms large here, the state crowded by churches both recently built and ancient relics contructed by the Portuguese long before St Paul's rose above the City of London. And these churches run a truely flabberghasting number of schools. I have passed hundreds on buses.
The benefits of this broadness of attitude and mind, and the commitment to society and education, are large. Kerala has near 100% literacy - far above the national average of 67%. It is also a wealthy place comparatively, buoyed by large numbers of skilled workers in Dubai and Europe, tourism, and a massive trade in Cashew nuts. It is also cleaner than most places I have been, while the cows that freely wonder the streets in other states are confined to the fields here.
This disparity, a communist state within a nation that has increasingly embraced free market economics in the last twenty years, is testament to the richness and diversity of Indian democracy.
        The national political system is truely vast - modelled on Westminister but also bearing similarities to the US Congress Federal/State system - 550 lower house and 225 upper house elected MPs sit in Dehli to adminster the will of nearly 800m enfranchised voters. Dehli controls foreign policy, economic policy, fiscal policy, defence, and national taxes while each of the 28 states tend to exercise policy (within certain national set parameters) over education, health, social issues and local taxation. It is in these areas that Kerala has had its success.
And if you consider the shocks that India has experienced in the last 62 years of independence the durability of this system is truely impressive. Three wars with Pakistan, several major fiscal crisis, divisive tenurs of political figures such as Indira Ghandi, the rising power of Hindu nationalism, the chafing between North Indian and South Indian broad alliances, the interference of the United States, China and the Soviet Union; all of these have challenged but never defeated a constitution that binds a people far more diverse in language, culture and religion than the whole of Europe combined. In the same period numerous South American, African and Asian democratic governments have buckled under the strain of Cold War politiking and the buffeting of global economics.
It staggers the mind, and long may it continue. There are issues of course, and I am a total amatuer at understanding the complexities and history of Indian goverment, but it is impossible to not be awed by scale.

The Backwaters of Kerala

Sneaking in homework before class - Francis is on the left

Fishermen

Me in a boat with Ivano, a nice Italian fellow

The view from the prow

School children getting on the ferry

Mud divers

Our guide keeping the sun off

          I was happy to be on the ferry heading out into the backwaters of Kerala leaving Allepey far behind. Lonely planet is fond of exaggerations but describing this polluted and rubbish strewn eyesore as 'almost Venicelike' was totally outrageous.
So things were now profoundly improving. The boat moved from jetty to jetty along picturesque wide canals and traversing lakes, handsome houses and village dwellings hugging the shores. At each stop hordes of school children would embark on their way to one of the dozens of Catholic schools that are dotted along these vast waterways.
Soon a young boy in a blue checked shirt sat down next to me and regarded me with an amused look.
"Where are you from?" he asked after a little time. This is the ever present question that the local always kick off with. I told him, we exchanged names.
It turned out over the course of our conversation that Francis was fourteen, a speaker of three languages, had a boundless enthusiasm for cricker, loved mathematics and computing, and was clearly prodigiously intelligent for his age. In his right hand he grasped a maths past paper. I glanced over it - it was easily to the same standard, perhaps beyond, anything set in England for fourth year secondary. He wanted to be a banker. He thought India would win the Cricket World Cup. I played him some music on my mp3 player. It occured to me after a short while that Francis was used to all this, tourists on his school boat must be a regularity in this Mecca of sightseeing. That he was so relaxed, friendly and expressive spoke of it.
         "Are you married?" he asked cheekily after hearing I was 29. I said I wasn't and he laughed. He fixed me with a look and said with with authority and a hint of pieous pity "You europeans, you have so so many girlfriends. Ha! Me - I will be married by the time I'm 22"
A man infront turned round and nodded with smile on his lips. This was his father. It breifly flashed across my mind he might think I was corrupting his son with my apparently decadent Englishness. But these fears were misplaced. We had a nice chat and then they disembarked after we shook hands.
Later I took a journey round on a small canoe with three other tourists, seeing fishermen and middle aged folks who dived to collect mud for bricks. The area was achingly beautiful, only occasionally the serentiy pierced by the behemothic house boats chartered by the more affluent foreign and Indian vacationers.
On returning to his basic house our guide's wife cooked us an enormous and delicious vegetarian thali and fish fry, while the guide energetically bounced around telling us of his son working in TV, a daughter who is currently a maid in Dubai, another daughter who is a nun in Kenya.
It was a wrench to go back into the dust and mahem of Allepey, but the day was a good one.

Birthday

Kathkaliki dancing - plays told through the medium of hand gestures and eyebrow waggeling

My awesome four poster

           It has been a little time since I made friends so I was on my own today and so thought my birthday might be one to forget. Things however worked out beautifully. Wondered around in the morning and saw the old Portuguese palace - complete with colourful murals and fine carvings - and the church where Vasco de Gama was buried.
I then saw some Keralan martial arts which were, well, totally brutal with the combatants armed to the teeth. People were justifiably advised to not sit in the front row of the theatre. A bamboo cane, a very evil looking steel slashing device and one of the participants ended up flying down from the stage into those seats at various times. The level of intensity of the fighting was staggering. I am sure a mistake would have resulted in serious and permanent injury. One particular combatant - only two thirds the size of the other three - was doing back flips and hand springs. Completely fucking crazy. Lamont would have loved it.
In the evening I went round to a local lady's house for a cooking lesson and this is where things really came together. There were six tourists in attendance and they turned out to be cracking people. Joe and Amy from Manchester, another Manc called Jodie, me, a french girl called Perriene, and a Dutch fellow called Wim. We made - well really Leeloy made and we watched - four superb dishes (Keralan Fish Curry, Potato and Aubergine Masala and Daal) and then had a bit of a dinner party. Everyone got on really well so the afterwards we went out for beers and talked about travelling and so on. It really made the day for me. A bit of company and good conversation.

Kochi

The belly aches passed and, after another epic 10 hour journey on the bus*, the metaphorical clouds parted and suddenly travelling around India did not seem like so much suffering. This is mainly because Fort Kochi is a little bustling paradise that is a million miles away from the mess of Mysore.

Smart little cafes sit around, Chinese fishing nets hang out into the bay in a picturesque sort of way, the seafood is great (although eating a crab without the use of shell crackers was a painstaking challenge), and the whole air of the place is very laid back.
On top of that I managed to get a four poster bed and a balcony for £6 a night which made me pretty happy. The guy who runs the homestay has been a champ too, letting me know what is going on around town.
The wealth of the area compared to the rest of India is quite staggering, and the associated levels of cleanliness and orderliness. You could almost believe you were in some town on the Portuguese coast.

*Quickly finding out that buses are the best way to see India. You get into the heart of life much more than trains do, and the routes are spectacular. The overtaking practices however are, well, questionable.

Sameer and Sandeep

I met two young Indian lads today in my luxery hotel I was using as a convalescence centre. While I was sitting alone toiling through some plain vegetable rice in the restaurant Sameer came over and invited me to join them which was generous. So I came on over and we had a chat. Both Sameer and Sandeep are medical students who study outside Bangalore. It quickly became apparent that their favourite topics were 1) smoking weed 2) heavy metal - principally the work of Iron Maidan and Metallica 3) girls 4) football. We had a funny conversation that mostly involved the asking me non sequiters of questions. I think they were both stoned.
Sandeep had this charming way of using the word "bugger" as a noun, verb and adverb. As in:-
"Bugger, hey bugger, you know Liverpool, I watch them bugger Chelsea the other day, bugger." This was essentially how he conversed the whole time. Surreal.
The pair were about twenty and, the heavy use of "bugger" aside, seemed to have modelled themselves with great reverence on American stoner movies. Dude Where's My Car, Harold and Kumar etc. They were nice people, generous to me and eager to hear about London and quick to offer advice about where to go in India, but there was something deeply depressing about their world view. Two intelligent and priviledged guys from one of the most culturally rich countres in the world acting as if they had grown up in Orange County. But then that's the way of the world I suppose. Globalisation yada yada yada.

*I realise I am being a complete hypocryte here. If you had met me when I was 20 and come half way round the world travelling to England from Argentina or China or wherever it is a guarantee that you would think I was a complete retard also. But such is life. With age comes a pretence to good judgement and personal virtue.

Mysore

The temple at Mysore Palace

The market

     Casually and indifferently maleovolent. That is what India feels to me. I am sweating in a huddled room, the floor is filthy and the bed sheets worn. My guts are turning upside down and I am forced into the toilet (thankfully I have my own) every twenty minutes or so. The bizarre arrangement of the tiny cubicle means that you can actually only sit on the seat side on. Nice.
It took me ten hours to get here on the bus overnight from Hampi, on roads that seemed to have been heavily shelled continuously for the last twenty or thirty years. Potholes the size of ponds, rocks the size of footballs strewn across the thoroughfares. I constantly expected the axels to snap at the abuse but thankfully we kept on into the night. Tired and bedraggled I got off the bus at six am and, all the other hostels being booked up, ended up here at the Lakashi "Deluxe" Lodge. Oh the guileless irony of that name.
Mysore is a dusty train wreck of a city, honking cars and an atmosphere so polluted it forms and congeals on the skin and within the lungs. The people are friendly enough, and the palace here is very impressive (enormously ornate and massive, and proof that while the Brits did little to introduce notions of equality and social justice to India, massive disparity in quality of life as was already well entrenched) anf the market colourful and bustling, but these three things are - from my admittedly irritated and befouled perspective - the seeming only redeeming factors of this dusty hell.
      Shamefully my stomach's yearning for the safe and predictable lead my feet to Dominoes Pizza (the only western junk merchant in town) for my only meal of the day, and I have set my heart on paying twice my usual accomodation budget for a nice room in a clean and spacious hotel. The thought has entered my head that I don't have the nuts for this urban madness, which is a bit discouraging as in a month I will be in Rajasthan which, as far as I gather, is a series of metropolitan cacophonies situated in the raging heat of the desert. However I am sure it is the stomach cramps talking and I will cheer up.
Curse these stained curtains, curse the smog, GAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH. I'm off to the loo again.

Hampi

The view of the vast ancient city from the monkey temple

A comically overloaded ferry

One of the many temples - featuring a fine stone chariot

Hampi is otherworldly. The boulders overflowing from the hills are stacked precarious and haphazard bringing to mind funnily enough cartoons. Bedrock, the home of the Flintstones, or the blasted Arizona landscape of Roadrunner. But apart from that there is not anything reminiscent of a cartoon. THh place has gravitas.
The inhabited part of Hampi itself is a tiny village really, utilising a single bazaar and a couple of temples of a vast deserted city that once used to be the second largest in the world. Blown away by Muslim invaders in the mid sixteen hundreds the remaining site of what must be three square miles or so is trapped in time- baths, watchtowers, temples and palaces part excavated. A lunarscape of scortched stone and finely carved architecture. I have never seen anything like it.
I have been staying on the other side of the river at a guest house called Mowglis. Stunning views of paddy fields and boulder mountians can be seen from the veranda, the room is pretty simple. The is true hippy country, my neighbours all have dreadlocks and huge voluminous Aladdin like trousers. There's a place called the Tipi up the hill where heavily pierced and tattooed mothers let their impsih children run around while the dads - bearded and glassy eyed - play the flute or tap bongos.
I've had a couple of cracking walks too - across to a resevoir in which apparently crocodiles swim (probably a ruse to keep tourists and locals out of going for a dip - without much luck....), and also to a monkey temple. Sadly not a giant carved monkey or anything you would find in Monkey Island or Indiana Jones - rather a squat utilitarian bungalow with a couple of gawdy idols in it. However it is perched on the top of a pretty impressive mountain, a fair old climb, and the views of the ruined city are clear and from great height which gives the impression of the actual ruined city as a model.
Now I am waiting to go to Mysore, on an 'Ordinary' government bus. We shall see what that means.

Goa

Our huts were just behind these picturesqur boats

Pete and me fishing

An elevated view of Palolem beach

Some cows chilling

After the rather tame lights of Anjuna it seemed perhaps that Goa would be pleasent rather than hedonistic, pretty rather than beautiful. I was due to meet Pete in south of the province so caught a series of three colourful buses down to Palolem, sharing them with school children and locals on their way home or to the market.
After rendez-vous and a nice beer Pete and I stayed in a basic yet well kept set of huts on what is the most stunning beach I have ever seen. Sure, it was commercialised, the whole beach front clustered with bars and restaurants but each had its own charm, especially in the dusk as fairy lights coiled round trees and supporting posts set up while enterprising businessmen let off fireworks to attract tourists to their establishments
The week there we divided between fine food - sizzlers and sublime veg curries and fish tadoori roasted straight out of the ocean - renting scoters and visiting nearby deserted stretches of sand, and attending a couple of silent discos spilling over with westerners and local Indian guys ever hopeful of getting lucky (without much luck) with the foreign ladies.
On a fishing trip Pete and I met a couple - Angie and Dean - from London and on the homeward stretch of an epic 18 month round the world trip. Both thirty they had married two years before and visited North America, South America, Australia and Asia. I was pretty jealous, but then there is no way that I could go away for that long alone! One of the many advantages of a balanced couple I suppose.
Angie was kind and pragmatic with a real sense of humour and a humanity about her. Small and angular from Blackpool, a trained pharmasist. Dean was very different, from the Malvern Hills, a professional musician by trade, a constant laugh and an open heart. He carried a little guitar with him, the names of all the places they had visited carved into the back. We only hung out together for a couple of days but they were very good people. Their wedding sounded exotic and fun, in took place in the main cathedral in Dubrovnik, sixty of their friends and family flew out!
In Palolem the sunsets were subtle and shaded in punks and purpes and greys, and the sun rather than slipping over the horizon would dip and then disappear as if into fog.
Goa is not India as everyone says. And I am discovering that as I have left. The (occasionally) gleaming toilets, pristine beaches and sunny attitudes of this most westernised state are not prevalent once you go out to Katarnaka. But Goa is a playground with natural beauty and colour in abundance. I am certain I will be going back.