It's my last day in India. I'm back in Bangalore, passing the time while waiting for my late-night plane flight. Yesterday was spent on the train from Varkala and tomorrow will be spent on the train and boat to Ko Tao (or Ko Samui - I'm still not sure where I'm going). In between I'm getting my last tastes of India.

It's not like I'm going to spend the day in an ayurvedic massage parlor (I should have done that while I was here though). I did manage to find a masala dosa for breakfast, and I hope to get a kabob for lunch. That's after I catch the 12:15 showing of The Last Samurai at the local english-language movie theater. I hope I don't have to pay for a seat for my backpack!

I'm looking forward to Thailand. I think my blog will get really boring, because my plan, at least, is to just sit back and relax while I'm there. Or that was my plan - now I'm starting to come up with at least a few activities. I will almost certainly (if I find a hotel!) start out with three or four days of training to get my scuba diving license. It's pretty cheap there although the question seems to come down to accomodation prices - I don't know how much I'll have to pay at the one place I'm in contact with but with luck they'll mail me back today. So some scuba diving may be next on my list.

Now that I've spent a week at the beach in Varkala, I am pretty sure I can handle a pretty substantial amount of beach time. Just swimming twice a day in the ocean is worth going on vacation for. In high school I read Dorris Lessing's Briefing for a Descent into Hell, and found myself really empathizing with the protagonist's dream of floating for days on end in the sea. Well I didn't do it for days, and the shore was never more than a couple hundred meters away, but I basically feel like I fulfilled my dream in large part. And it was just as pleasant as I imagined. Maybe I'll move to Florida when I get home.

Anyway, for today I just have to get rid of some excess rupees, try not to carry my bag around too long, catch my movie and get to the airport with some time to spare. Once again I find myself in the midst of a long and tiring period of travel but I know that in a couple of days I'll be settled in somewhere beautiful and sunny and I'll be able to do nothing again, in peace.

- posted by Joachim @ 11:36 PM

 
Again, I see that it's been a while since my last blog posting. Well, I apologize (to those few readers who have soldiered on through the lengthy lapse in verbiage) but life is much, much slower down here in the South.

Kochi was my first exposure to the South of India. Travelling from Ooty to Munnar we did pass through a certain region of unusual climate, but the heat and humidity passed like a dream and in the morning we were in the mountains again. But after Munnar there was no avoiding it any more - we were in the South.

Palm trees are everywhere, along with a certain quantity of underbrush - not, perhaps, significant by western standards, but for India's arid climate, quite respectable. It's hot, obviously, and fairly humid, although here by the ocean, there's usually a pleasantly cool breeze. Temperatures are in the eighties, or around 30 for you new-fangled metric types.

From Kochi I took a ferry that passed through the "back waters" of Kerala. Kerala has a really beautiful area of inland waterways. Canals are everywhere - indeed, it seemed like there was more water than land for most of our trip - straight and sometimes quite wide and lined with palm trees and villages. The villages are sometimes only one house wide, built on a tiny spit of land between canals. From Kottayam I took a bus to Varkala, which is where I am now and where my Indian adventure draws to a close.

Varkala is a sleepy little Indian temple town that happens to be right next to a bustling beach resort. The resort is, in the local Franco-Indo-Israeli English dialect, "quite touristic", but it has its charms nevertheless. Chief among these is that you can talk to people and expect them to talk back, comprehensibly! Ok, maybe it's more accurate to say the chief charm is the beach.

The beach at Varkala is really nice. Now I'm not much of a beachcomber, and although I've been to Florida and the Riviera, I don't remember them too well. But I think Varkala's beach is really quite good. The restaurants and shops line the tops of some fairly sizeable cliffs, while the beach is at the bottom, anchored in a jumble of fallen sandstone boulders. The other side lies in the warm blue waters of the Arabian Ocean.

The long rollers come in steadily all day from the West, breaking quite a way out in the shallow water. One has to move out quite a distance just to get past the breakers, which sometimes can be quite violent (I met a girl in Kochi with a black eye, heard of a guy with a broken foot and yesterday saw a man in a neck brace). Most people like to body surf in the waves but I prefer to move out just a little further, maybe into water just deep enough to stand in, or a little deeper, and just let the big waves roll under me and lift me up. The water is warm, although you can feel a slight cold draft coming in at the bottom of each wave, if you let your feet dangle. It's also smooth and gentle, not like the slightly choppier seas in Gopalpur. There's a strong but steady current pulling towards the north. If you start at the south end of the beach and just drift, you'll find yourself at the north end in a few minutes. It's too strong for me to make any real headway against but swimming in is very easy because of the constant rollers, which try to push you that way anyway. So there's never really any danger of drifting into the rocks at the north end of the beach, even if the Indian lifeguards will whistle at you frantically if you get anywhere near there.

It's really relaxing here. There's not much to do but get some sun (I'm red all over and if I'm not careful I will get my first Indian sunburn today), swim a little, and eat. The fish is pulled right up onto the beach and from there goes onto the tables in front of the restaurants. Last night I had a fried grouper that was just exquisite. Usually they grill them in the tandoor, though. It may not be Indian food, exactly, but damn, it's good.

You can also shop. My first day here I spent a fair amount of time looking for new clothing. It had become apparent in Kochi that the outfits that had seen me through all the rest of India were not going to cut it down here. So now I have two nice, light pairs of pants and three shirts that let plenty of air through. One is (or claims to be) silk, and I think it looks cool, although it's orange and people always complain about me wearing loud colors. We'll see how it stands up when I get home. It cost me just over ten dollars to have it made.

- posted by Joachim @ 2:49 AM