Let me just start off by saying that South Africa's recent win at the World Cup didn't go unnoticed in India...okay to a billion or so Indians it did, but I however got caught up in the action like never before. Due to the complete lack of coverage in the far-away town i was in, i had to resort to getting royally drunk by myself, in my hotel room, receiving commentary via text from my Mum - and this was at 2am local time. The celebrations went on till the early hours and we, sorry I, partied like it was 1995.
I've now spent four weeks here, and everyday of those four weeks has presented me with a moment of humour, a moment of frustration and a moment of pure bewilderment - simply put, this country is like nothing Ive ever experienced. Its nuts, certifiable, absolutely crazy and i love it.
I spent a week in Goa, India's beach playground. I cant say i was blown away by the place but it did have its charm. The week was spent visiting different beaches and trying to grasp the complete spectrum of people living in Goa. The place is littered with foreigners from all backgrounds. I met a recovering cocaine addict who had, that night, dropped three pills??? a long haired 60 year old hippy who like to be called Weeeeeee Pete, claimed he'd smoked more pot than Howard Marks and hadn't left Goa for 15 years and finally an ex-con called Rolland who had been in prison on three different continents and was now in India to 'find himself' (i think the authorities may have been trying to 'find' Rolland...). One can gather the calibre of long term foreigners lingering around Goa... All in all though it was a cool place.
Onto the state of Kanartaka, where i had arranged to meet up with an old family friend at a Yoga school in Mysore and then planned to do some trekking in the hills of a place called Ooty.
The week passed with a myriad of activities. I endured a 17 hour bus ride with a drunk Indian sharing my bunk, who's calloused feet i got to now intimately as they were consistently positioned under my nose. I popped Imodium's like they were tick-tak's as on an onslaught of traveler's sickness made a certain part of my body look like the Japanese flag. I paid a small fortune to a small Indian man to massage my entire body for two hours only to have it end with me close to tears and in a rather unhappy state; i was then 'pressure steamed' by the same individual in a contraption that could have originated in the London Dungeons loosing a layer of skin in the process (please refer to photos, facebook, 'India: chapter 2'). We were asked to pose for literally 1oo's of photos with Indian families, holding kicking, screaming children while pictures were snapped. We ate curries that made our fillings melt, climbed hills with views that made our jaws drop, danced with a thousand Indians at a Hindi music festival, met colourful, wonderful and downright weird people all along the way and even managed to have high tea at the Savoy...
This in all of five days, and i think that's what India is all about, it throws the best and the worst of things at you all at once and somehow, through all the ordered chaos, you have to submit to it.
Onto Kerela and its backwaters and beaches. I spent a relaxing few nights in the town of Cochin, eating massive amounts of sea food, lying in the sun, sleeping and trying in vain to find a place to watch the World Cup final.
Highlights had to be learning to climb a coconut tree - which i will now update my C.V with; accompanying a couple of fishermen on their morning run (we didn't catch much) and having a great conversation with a guy called Rishnu. Rishnu could not speak a word of English, but that didn't stop us having a 40 minute conversation on the the ferry back from one of the Islands. It was around mid-night and from what i could gather he was a 50 year old fisherman with a wife and three kids. As we had a our multilingual conversation he produced the fattest joint i have ever had the good fortune to come across - we chatted and smoked. As we smoked either i learnt to speak Hindi or he became fluent in English but it was a meeting of two minds. I think we agreed to set up a fishing export business with an attached hotel and guesthouse, he would do the bulk of the fishing, run the books and be concierge at our hotel, i would market and sell the fish in all corners of the globe - it was promising, although i failed to get Rishnu's email address.
From here I had planned to hire out a converted rice boat for a few days to cruise the waters, luckily i managed to find some other people to do the trip with, which greatly reduced the cost. If i recommend one thing in India it is to rent a houseboat in the backwaters of Kerala - beer flowed like water (although we had to ask the crew to set out on foot twice to go and purchase more), the prawns and fish were huge, resembling something that could only have been genetically modified by Tescos but confident in the fact that it was all pulled up from the depths of the fertile backwaters of this area. A great way to get drunk, eat well and see the local culture. Do it.
And now i sit and type from a beach side resort, built on top of a cliff - Varkala, another interesting place. India is endless and so could this blog be if it weren't for the fact it's time to go and watch the sunset. Its been packed to the rafters with so many sights, stories and experiences that i smile everytime i think of the place. But beyond its beauty, its dirt, its grime, its temples, its churches and its rip-offs, beyond the chaos, the languages, its cows and all its culture there is the Indian himself - and that for me has been what's made it so unique. They are the most friendly, open and easily approachable people i have ever come across and there's a billion of them...and i think this could be a good thing for the world...
And onto my next stop - SE Asia. The thought of crystal clear waters, white sand beaches, shooting AK47's at chickens and having massages that all end happily draw me to the countries of Thailand, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos.
Two months and all in the company of the one and only Mark 'The Shark' Earl...
Oh god, i only hope we get out alive....
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