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Published: January 15th 2007
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Waterfalls
I am standing on a step im not some kind of giant Hello all,
Well i cant actually believe it, theres only 11 days left until i leave! Where has the time gone??
Well since my last blog, new years eve came and went, Marianne my sister had arrived by this time and we spent the evening at a few beach bars in Palolem, and then on to my usual haunt of Cafe Del Mar. This was totally transformed for the evening, i have never seen anything like it, there was literally a sea of people spilling out all along the beach, and it seemed like every Indian in the land had turned up for what they seemed to think was a free grope fest. Not impressed- although has been the most action I've seen all holiday!
Bumped into Frank here, one of the guys I'd met during my suicidal time in Pondicherry- and was really great to see him again and prove im not always such a depressive freak!
Poor Marianne was dying with the flu, but she saw well into the Indian new year before heading home to bed. I stayed out with some of the girls til the early hours, but it was crazy by 4am everyone seemed
to have left so had no other choice really but to retire to bed!
Purely because of Marianne we spent the whole week relaxing on the beach- of course i was held totally against my will, and so yet another week very quickly passed doing not a lot at all in Palolem! We had a great day trip out though when we went to see Dhudhasagar Waterfall which was absolutely amazing, it is 603 metres high and because the colour of the water is milky white it was named Dudhsagar meaning ocean of milk. We all went for a swim in the pool at the bottom of the fall, and jesus mary was it cold! I have absolutely no idea what the temperature was in there but i am suprised peoples limbs weren't freezing over. My beautiful tan that i'd worked so hard for suddenly turned a vile shade of blue. We stayed in for a while nevertheless- you could also see huge fish swimming beneath which was a little wierd at first, and got even more annoying when the other tourists kept throwing food in for them and encouraging them to the surface. I chose to swiftly exit
Me & my monkey!!
feeding time for the monkeys- grabbing a banana out of my hand, those little guys were so strong!! at this point!
At the falls, you had to walk through a kind of woody area to get there, and en route we were surrounded to hundreds of monkeys. They were so cute, and we had come prepared armed with bananas and nuts which we fed to them. When we fed them the nuts if you kept a few in your palm and closed your fingers down on top of them, the monkeys would come over and peel your fingers back one by one to take the nuts from your hand it was so cute, and also so freaky how human they are!
After the falls we went back to the Sahakari spice farm which i had previously visited when Laura was over. Thi stime we had a much better guide, who actually made the spices interesting, people had turns trying to climb up the spice trees (me and Maz sat that one out!) and then on to the sole reason of returning there..... I got to wash an elephant in the lake! It was so fantastic I dont think i will ever forget the experience. The elephant was 25 years old, they normally live until they are
120 ish and she weighed in at a whopping 4 tons, suddenly i felt very slim! Heather and Jess also did this too, and we were all sooo pleased that we had chosen to do this instead of just a elephant ride. We all absolutely stank for the whole 2 hour journey home, but at least it wasn't half as bad as the camel smell!!
On leaving Palolem- i know shock horror, im actually out of there, we embarked on a whopping 20 hour train journey down to Trivandrum in Kerala. Nothing like bringing me right back to reality. Marianne HATED it! Although she has backpacked (in her younger years lol) she now says she cant believe she lived like this for 6 months. Although i have to agree, im hardly the model backpacker myself, this train was particularly scabby. Cockroaches galore, beds designed for people about 3 foot tall, with the matresses made out of a wood like material. The constant, and i literally mean every 2 minutes men passing though yelling 'chai, somosa, pakora, biriyani', or 'coffee coffee coffee' (i really had to resist the urge of shouting out 'oi oi oi' to that one, but my
humour had escaped me somewhat at 2am.) I actually think i couldve bought a washing machine on that train had i wanted one there were so many salesmen walking through. When we got on the train from Goa, there was a huge gap between the platform edge and the train and as marianne stepped up to the train one of her favourite Birkenstocks fell off her foot and down on to the tracks. I only had time to jump on the train myself so she had to leave it behind Cinderella stylee, who knows maybe her Indian Prince Charming might turn up with it before we go!! She is so gonna kill me for this!
Anyway back to the travels. We arrived in Trivandrum, on the east coast practically at the most southern tip of India, and decided to get a rickshaw to a beach resort called Kovallam. We were a little sceptical about going there as the Lonely Planet didn't exactly speak too highly of it, but we couldn't go too far as we had a few nights booked in a plush resort 2 days later, and also felt like 20 hours was enough travelling for one day!
We were nicely suprised by Kovallam which just goes to show that you should never take anyone else's opinion until you've seen for yourself. It was a really pretty little seaside resort, with a gorgeous lighthouse on a cliff at the end of the beach, lovely restaurants and yet more shops to feed the addiction!
One night we went and had our tarot cards read by a western lady called Anna, couldnt quite work out where she was from, she was pushing the 40 mark and it was so funny, during both of our readings she kept trailing off and telling us her life story, and about her 20 year old Indian boyfriend- hey not on my time lady! She was actually lovely, and frighteningly accurate in Marianne's reading, mine wasn't quite so promising although she did get one or two little things right but basically I'm staying single for the next few years, but i will definatly have numerous children and be a fantastic mother sometime in the future which is nice!
From Kovallam we got a taxi to take us to Poovar, a luxury resort recommended to me by Manisha from Hyderabad where we were to spend
the next few days taking laziness to a whole new level.....
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Patrick
non-member comment
What is a Birkenstock?
Coffee, coffee, coffee - nice one. Very funny. Great pictures of the elephants, by the way. Enjoy last few days and see you soon.