How to worship a sacred basil plant.

Massive apologies guys, for the lack of updates. Have been doing 'proper' travelling in the last week, i.e. through places where they're not so much with the English-speaking, let alone the high-speed internet connection-ing, thus its been somewhat tricky. It's gratified (worried?) me though, how much you all seem to miss it, so I will do my best to get you up to date.

Days 20-22, Sat-Mon, 08-10/11/08, Cochin

So, as of Monday 8th, stage 1 of my trip was over, and I set off to fly all the way south to almost the tip of India. You may well ask why I decided to go right from the north to the very south in one go, only to make my way north again (a Polish guy in Delhi described my itinerary as ".... interesting"). Blame Cooper. For all of you not intimately acquainted with her already (I'm looking at the extended family here), Ann is a friend who I played rugby with in Oxford, who was building toilets in a tribal village in south India for a month, and now has another month to travel around and rediscover such delights as electricity, internet, and running water. As I write she is giggling away manically to herself at youtube, so clearly it is a long and involved normalising process. Anyways, she's in India until the very start of December, so we decided to take the opportunity to travel up the western coast together, and take advantage of having someone to help you make it back to your hotel after a 2 day rave in Goa, etc. I'd been a bit worried about the flight, as had been told the domestic airline I was travelling with was notorious for being delayed, but luckily everything went swimmingly. That is, apart from the fact that I was feeling exceptionally hungover from the night before, when I had gone back to that original bar in Delhi and rediscovered the stronger version of Kingfisher lager, which is far nicer, about the same price, but is 8%. [On a side note re: Delhi by the way, coming back to it it seemed far less insane than it had done before, and indeed, rather like an old friend. Clearly, either I've become a harcore traveller whom nothing can faze, or rather more likely, the touts can smell the fresh ones and the state of my hair and clothes meant they knew I'd been in the country a while...]

Cooper met me at the airport and took me back to the main offices/house of yearoutindia, the volunteering company she'd been working for, where we were very kindly allowed to stay for free. This was a good thing, cause I spent most of the journey with my head out of the car window like a dog, taking in the scenery. I cannot, cannot describe to you how strange it was to come from Rajasthan to Kerala. It was and is like a completely different country. The first thing I noticed, as the plane was circling down, was just how green it was. I had been in the desert for the past couple of weeks, this was a jungle. The second, and rather less pleasant, realisation, was just how humid it was. In terms of actual temperature the north and the south were pretty much equal, but the HUMIDITY. Christ, like nothing I've ever experienced. My advice is never travel in southern India with someone whom you want to appear attractive, cause believe me, one is sweating attractively within about 30 seconds of touching down. We had always learnt about Kerela in our Geography lessons as an poster child for economic growth in developing countries. Its a socialist state, which means that although alcohol is state regulated (we had a couple of interesting nights where we had beer cunningly concealed in teapots), it makes up for it with excellent roads, modern sensibilities, far less poverty than the north, and a less mercenary attitude to tourists. I mean, its not universal. In the tribe where Cooper was staying once one reached a certain point in one's menstrual cycle one had to go and live in a little hut at the edge of the village and not speak to anyone for a few days, but I must admit it was lovely to walk down a road and not have to fend off 50 attempts to sell me necklaces, carpets, cigarettes, cold drinks and even just information.

On the Sunday we (me, Cooper and one of the other volunteers, Hannah) took a trip through the Kerelan backwaters, one of the 'top things to do in India' according to most guides. Admittedly it was pretty fit - just gliding along these narrow streams past thick jungle with only the occasional cow or tiny collection of bamboo huts to disturb the silence. It very much reminded me of the rivers in 'Apocolypse Now', and I felt the need to play some Doors to set the scene, but sadly my ipod batteries had run out. Schade. We ended the day at Fort Cochin itself, which is an island set off the main town on the mainland, successively colonised by the Portugese, Dutch and British, as well as all the Arab, Chinese and Persian traders who have arrived there at various points. Consequently, it feels strangely Mediterranean, lots of cafes and a proper promenade along the seafront, though nicer in weather than Spain or Italy! Unfortunutely, in my excitement at seeing the sea and the insatiable urge I always get to go and paddle in it, I not only accidently got a lot more splashed than I intended, but slipped climbing back up, broke one of my sandals, and cut my foot open. I think Hannah was a little freaked out at having this new person break herself within a day of meeting her, though turned more bemused than comforted when both Ann and I assured her that I do this sort of thing on a more or less weekly basis.

The following day, complete with new sandals, me and Ann set off for Fort Cochin for the day, and spent it wandering around the various churches, synagogues and strange havellis depicting the god Krishna pleasuring 8 milkmaids at once that inhabit the place. We also went to a performance of Kathalkali in the evening, which is a VERY weird type of dance/drama performance that Kerela is famous for, and which mainly seems to involve dancing with the eyebrows, gurning, and basically behaving and looking like an extremely drunk Agnes. Utter hilarity.

Days 23-25, Tues-Thurs 11-13/11/08, Kannur and Udupi

Tuesday was mainly spent travelling, taking a train from Cochin to Kannur, heading up the coast. Kannur is basically a small, non-touristy Indian town, famous only in that the surrounding villages are home to the theyyam ritual - a kind of religious ceremony where the chosen devotee, after many months of preparation, goes into a kind of trance, assumes the spirit of the god, and blesses all the villagers, who dance and chant in some kind of crazy mass drugged-up rave. Needless to say it sounded pretty cool. We arrived in Kannur about 7.30pm, had dinner, and then emerged back onto the streets to find that everything, EVERYTHING, had closed, that it was completely dark, and that our queries with regards to a bar were met with utter incomprehension more than anything else. Kannur aint the most banging place on earth. Thankfully though, we were able to bribe our hotel porter to go out and purchase us some beer, so we managed to survive the night. Next morning we wandered off to the beach, our first prper one in India, and for me the first proper opportunity to sunbathe on a hot sandy beach since Majorca over a year ago. Needless to say I was a tad excited. Nice beach as well, beautiful clear warm sea, very few people (apart from the extremely annoying and intrusive Indian schoolboys who come and stare at the white girls on the beach, but never mind...) That was also the day of the amazing prawn masala. We were wandering around the headland, in search of food, when we came upon this tiny little cafe, where they spoke no English and had no such thing as a menu etc. Instead we were told that we could have fish, prawns or crab, and shown the (still alive) selection. Amazing food. Best yet in India, and obviously ridiculously cheap. Mum, you would have loved it.

Sadly the day kind of went down from there. We set off to the village at the required time to catch the theyyam, which was meant to be spectacular there, upon at extremely rickedy bus that required the same sort of reinforced steel upper body casing as the camels, arrived at this village, climbed down approximately 500 steps to the riverside temple, only to find that the theyyam had finished 15 mins before and that we'd been told the wrong time by the tourist office. Bugger. Back to Kannur it was then (where incidentally, there was an hour long power cut and thus no ceiling fan). Thankfully, one of the best things about travelling with someone else is that these kind of things seem funny when you're not on your own. If I was going it solo I'd have probably cursing all of India by that stage!

Nevertheless, Udupi made up for our disappointment. We caught a night train on the Wednesday and arrived into Udupi, a tiny town in Karnataka at 6am, whereupon we promptly found a hotel and fell asleep again. Slightly later in the day, we caught a bus to nearby Malpe, a tiny fishing village from where we hoped to get a boat out to St. Mary's Island, where there are lots of cool geological rock formations. Unfortuntely we arrived to find that there were no boats available to go, but we did have a nice walk along a very beautiful beach and a slightly less nice walk through a rotting fish factory (for your future reference, rotting fish is not a nice smell) On arrival back in Udupi we went to have a look around the famous Krishna temple that is the social and spiritual centre of the town, and were told that by chance we had arrived in the midst of the festival and that we could watch the ceremony later in the evening. This was pretty damn incredible. We, plus hundreds of Indian devotees, were piled into this temple where they proceeded to light something ridiculous like 14,000 candles, whilst continuously ringing these bells, banging these drums and cymbals, and wafting incense towards the idol, who was himself wearing a coat made from hundreds of diamonds. Bling in the extreme. Then they took the idol outside, put it in this lighted boat, and rowed it around the bathing tank three times, then in this crazy 30ft chariot which they dragged round the square, along with what we were told was a 'sacred basil plant' (?) all to the sound of drums and chants and so on. It was a hell of an experience. After that, me and Ann found a very posh resturant/cocktail bar and proceeded to make the night even more awesome. I have discovered that cocktails are extremely yummy when all you have had to drink for the last three weeks is beer.

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Part of trip: Backpacking around India and Nepal

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