Happy Tamil New Year!

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Dear All,

For the last ten days I have been travelling from place to place quite a bit and am finding it hard to get time on the internet as I am squashing every last thing possible into these last two weeks of India - I can't beleive it!

We left off in Varkala and since then we took the bus south to the city of Trivandrum which is slightly inland from the coast. We were told it was a horrible sprawling city and not to go there but of course it was on the way so we had to see for ourselves. Having spent more than enough time in cities such as Calicut and Kollam, Trivandrum came as a pleasant surprise. Although relitively large and relitively sprawling, Trivandrum had quite wide roads and cool markets which makes it seem alot less clostraphobic than other places. We went to Sri Padmanabhaswamy (what a mouth full) temple which had impressive giant sized statues of red guards or gods I wasn't sure ascending in size as you went up to it. Non-Hindus we not allowed into the temple and I wasn't going to attempt to feign religion so we quietly took a few pictures and went into the neighboring museum for a guided tour. At this point I would love to spurt some interesting facts and figures of this beautiful temple however the guided tour was run by a very grumpy old man who didn't take kindly to questions and grunted throughout the entire thing and demanded a more than generous tip at the end. He would walk through the wooden rooms and point at little statues "hercules" he would say - what has hercules got to go with this Indian temple??

After a few days in Trivandrum we then moved further down the coast to the beachside town of Kovalum. There is not much I can say about Kovolam except the fact that it was essentially north Goa all over again with a beach packed full of charter flight brits and annoying touts and rocket high prices. We stayed a full two nights in the blacksanded nightmare of a place before moving on to the very tip of India, the lands end of Kanyakumari.

Kanyakumari is quite an interesting place as it is where all of the Indians come to holiday. It must have been a time where kids were off school because it was packed with large families walking round in large packs wearing sombreros for some reason. Every corner you turned someone was trying to sell you these oversized hats. Bizarre. This wasn't all they were trying to sell. I had the lighter trick used on me a few times which made me giggle where they hold a lighter or match to a leather specimen to prove its quality "Looking here Madam, good quality, special price for you isn't it?" The town itself is beautiful to look at as the sea is so blue and it has a number of temples, statues and memorials all crammed within the mass of hotels, restaurants and other tourist attractions. We went to Vivekananada memorial which involved getting a ferry over to the rock it rested on. This whole process took the better half of two hours and brought to light one of the things the talents the Indians tend to lack: queuing. There is no system or way of enforcing order in anyway, of course there are barriers and markers of where you ought to stand but this is completely disregarded in the mad rush to get in front. It can be frustrating at times as you feel you are being curteous by not pushing but sometimes instead of resisting you have to get involved which towards the end we did. The memorial itself was dissapointing I must say as there was no information whatsoever on who this statue was or what his significance was but it was a nice outing and great views back onto land. We spent a few days here wandering around various temples which seemed to also demand excessive donations and memorials including Ghandi's memorial where we had a crazy but funny guide who wanted us to take pictures of him which was quite amusing. "I am loving the english. This being my favourite country" he would say. I'm sure he says it to all the tourists... "Ahhh Germany this being.."

From Kanyakumari we took a gruelling 7 hour, uncomfortable bus journey to the city of Madurai. I was sat next to a lady who kept speaking at me in Tamil and smiling the widest loveliest smile and bobbing her head at me to respond. No matter how many times I showed I didn't understand she would repeat it again and smile. We arrived yesterday evening and crashed into the nearest hotel possible. Today we have been to see an old half crumbled palace where we were followed by a group of around 60 school children who were on an outing and were exstatically excited that I thought they might pass out at the oppertunity to ask us about our home lives. Then the adults started joining in untill we were sandwiched in the middle of a growing croud shouting answers back at all the questions they wanted to know. It was generally what our names were and what our parents names were that sort of things. We managed to scramble out at the end and jump into a tut tut towards the main town and temple. When we got to the temple my camera ran out of battery so will make another trip there this afternoon but of what I saw it was unbeleivably massive, colourful and stunning. The whole outside is covered in painted gods in golds, purples, reds it almost looks like a gigantic candy house or something. At the base of the temple is where the tailors famously flock, each peddling manickly creating garmets, repairing bags for as long as the eye can see. So far I am enjoying Madurai very much. It has a cosmopolitan Soho feeling about it and the people are so friendly. The buildings are tall and of course it is packed full of people but there is some other factor to it that I can't quite put my finger on. Perhaps the colour? Vibrancy? Smell? Who knows. Again I shall keep you updated. Oh yes an I forgot to add - its Tamil New Year today so we're expecting a party or something, I'm hoping a colourful street party but don't want to get my hopes up!

Next we plan to escape the heat and venture to the hill station of Kodaikanal which is in the western ghats and slightly higher than here which will be a welcome releif. I plan to cram in quite a few places so will be quite an adventurous two weeks.

Hope all is well at home.

Lots of love


Meg xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx

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