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Published: March 24th 2009
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March 21st
Back on the beach, we haggled hard with the most enterprising of the hawking locals. This man had purchased a large (and extremely varied) assortment of body-boards, and was renting them out by the hour. The waves were relentless.
Our book informs us that despite the recent introduction of blue-shirted lifeguards, a couple of tourists still drown every year. The lifeguards lead a harried existence, blowing their whistles every time they think someone doesn’t see the next massive wave that’s about to crash on their head, or swims too close to the rocks. The undertow is so powerful you can barely walk against it, let alone swim, so those poor lifeguards spend their days sweating buckets in their collared shirts and fretting about body-boarding morons who swim too far out.
After about twenty minutes, I returned to the beach with saltwater and sand in every orifice, and convinced the guy to let me trade in the body-board for a beach chair. I watched George get stomped by waves as I gently tanned my worn-out bod.
We lunched at the next cove over, just feet away from the wrath of more powerful waves jumping
through the rocks. The only setback was that the waiter thought I’d said “mixed veg salad” instead of mixed veg curry, and the salad looked a little on the poisonous side. We walked back to the beach and picked up some souvenirs for the families along the long sidewalk.
Interestingly, the whole of Kovalam’s beachfront is being rejuvenated, and the sidewalk is being doubled with tsunami relief money, we’ve learned. Given that the ocean already engulfs the beach at high tide, and that Kovalam is one of the most affluent areas in the south (the clear water and clean beaches attract many wealthy Russian tourists) I wonder if this money could not be put to better use, like, say, rebuilding the damaged village of Kanyakumari.
Or maybe they could give some of those polio-ridden monks a wheelchair or two to share around. No one asked me, though, so I guess we’ll just have to wait and see how it turns out.
March 22nd
We took one final swim on our charmed beach, packed, and with great effort and heavy hearts, headed to Trivandrum, where we caught a plane to Bangalore. Damn this
white elephant know as Bangalore International Airport - all that marble and no facilities whatsoever. After much ado, one tourist information guy booked us into the nearest airport hotel (20 km away, but the city is 50). We ordered take away and ate on a living room table set exclusively for us.
March 23rd
Slobbed about, blogging. Not much to report. Left for the airport around 1400, then sat around there for a while. Had a nice flight to Mumbai, but we had to wait around to identify our baggage before they put it on the next flight. Also, once we were inside the airport, we weren’t allowed out. Armed guards, plus dogs, were positioned in bunkers every 200m. After a while, our bags were delivered, and my beautiful Eagle Creek, my pride and joy, my baby, had been tampered with. Some jerk had unzipped the hide-away handle and jammed it, rendering it both awkward to wheel and impossible to store. I threw a fit when they handed us the number to LOST AND FOUND. Eventually, while I sulked in the corner, George managed to extract contact information in Abu Dhabi.
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