Week Six (I think)

There's been much travelling since last time, I'm starting to rearrange my plans and routes purely to avoid having to take long bus journeys. The Trains are great because there's usually loadsa room and the doors are kept open so it's airy and there's always people to chat to, but the bus has a magical way of draining your energy just from sitting there, my journey last night (meant to be 7 hours, took 12.5 hours)went a bit downhill when, while stopped at services in the middle of nowhere, one of the front tyres burst. Anyway, obviously needed to get that off my chest, since the last posting I got straight outta Mangalore and headed to Gokarna, North Karnataka. I stayed on Om Beach, a place that a few years ago was apparently a deserted paradise, but word got around and now it's slowly but surely becoming like Goa, with more guesthouses and restaurants opening every month. It seems that many travellers are already starting to search for somewhere else currently undiscovered where you can sleep on the beach and there are no shops or business about, just a few people and a bonfire, but trouble is word will always get around. It was good to chill for a few days though, there was just a tiny amount of hippies body surfing all day in the eerily still sea. That's pretty much all the detail I can provide, it was the ultimate location for doing nothing, but that was my vocation back in the UK so felt the urge to keep moving. I got a call from my cousin Adeline asking me if I wanted to meet up in Bangalore again before heading off, so at the last minute got on the bus for Bangalore Trip 3 : This time it's personal.
Was good seeing Adeline again, will definitely be staying in touch, and sadly may have to come back to India again and again to visit, nevermind. While I was in Bangalore I acquired my strangest and rarest artifact yet : an album of Queen songs covered by dance artists including Culture Beat and the immortal Scatman John. I listened to it once but will now leave it in it's case forever to preserve the purity, or something.
After Bangalore went up North to Hampi, contender with Kochi for best place I've visited so far. The town is surrounded by miles and miles of colossal boulders, balanced on top of each other or just strewn accross the blazing landscape. The actual town has been custom made for travellers, like Arambol but without the beach, while the surrounding area is littered with ancient ruins arounds every corner. Some of the ruins involving climbing over huge boulders or crossing shallow rivers and other stuff I think is great. On the evening of my first day there I met Nagar, a local restaurant guy, and the rest of the weekend turned into a drunken mission with no direction. He introduced me to his mates and his ways of drinking prohibited vodka in vast quantities untill you can't move for a week. In the end it was a challenge to keep a tiny spark of sobriety flickering as we biked accross the plains or swam in secluded little pools amongst the rocks, but I always managed to find my way to bed at some point in the night. The saturday I spent there was Holi Festival, celebrating the end of winter (though it's so hot in the south all the time that I guess it's more for celebration's sake). Got up at the crack of dawn and commenced with the merriment (too much dodgy vodka), the main theme of the festival is that everyone throws colour about, coloured water or powder, untill everyone and everything is looking like a rainbow. For me and many other inebriated travellers this descended into a battle with the local kids, like paintball but not so painful, while drummers went crazy in the background, was a fantastic time, and the mass exodus to the river to wash made it feel like the summer has arrived. By the time I left Hampi about three days later I had managed to remove all of the paint except for one of my eyebrows, which is still bright orange. I forget this till I look in the mirror, but for some reason can't shift it no matter what I do. I know I get a ginger beard, but a ginger eyebrow is pushing it. Nevermind, I'll just have to learn to adapt. After saying seeya later to Negar, headed to Bijapur where I was too hungover to do much but wander around, then last night got on the bus to Pune (Poona) , Maharashtra where I am currently planning my next step. The main city here is much like Bangalore, which is useful for stocking up on things and as a major student town the nightlife is supposed to be okay, but think I'll stick to the mineral water tonight (I won't, but I think I will).

Week Four & Five

Been a busy couple of weeks, as I'd hoped, after leaving Bangalore the trip properly began. It was good to finally leave that city, had been a strange week with no major adventure but a few tragic moments like being informed by a supermarket security guard that my baggy fisherman's trousers had fallen down by my knees. On the Saturday I headed to Mysore, a town famous for incense and sandalwood. I only spent twenty four hours there, but regret not staying for longer now, it had a good atmosphere and I met many other travellers who gave me great advice for the future. While there I took a bus up to the top of 1062m high Chamundi Hill. At the summit was a beautiful hindu temple, and about a thousand touts and monkeys. After a while I decided to walk down, which involves over a thousand rocky steps back to town. Halfway I stopped for a fag and a chat to a very chilled local guy. After about ten minutes I realised that he hadn't tried to sell me anything and was just being friendly. He then came up with a very friendly proposal involving me and him (can't quote him exactly as this is a family website), he was a nice guy but not my type so carried on walking.
The next day I set out for Kannur in Kerala, having changed my mind about fifty times about where to go next. After a six hour nightmare journey where every other second I was launched out of my seat by bumps in the road, I got to the very crap town in the North of Kerala. Things seemed to slide from here as the nexct day I finally experienced that wonderful bad guts phenomenon and stayed in my grotty room all day untill evening when I set out for Calicut, an equally crap nuneventful town in the North of Kerala. The next day I awoke to chronic headaches and realised that as things were so bad that usual meant that by the end of the week I'd be having a great time. I wasn't wrong, the next day I got to Kochi, the place where I want to live once I've got my act together. Kochi is possibly the friendliest most laid back place I've ever seen. It was over 45 degrees while I was there but that was perfect for the lazy atmosphere. While I was there I made friends whith loads of locals who I now have email addresses for and have made lots fo promises to go back and drink with them, which sadly I can't do as have to move on. I spent an evening watching a performance of Kathakali, a traditional Keralan dance drama, then the next day I went on the famous Keralan backwater cruise, seven hours of drifting through an endless network of lagoons, rivers and canals. It was a good tour as we got to stop off at little islands with small farming villages on and see how they make rope and other important things. The next day I got a ferry to nearby Vypeen island and tried to body surf on Cherai beach. I say 'tried' because "the surf was awesome, dude", and it generally involved alot of getting thrown around in the waves, which suits me. when I got out of the sea I noticed that I had grazed my knee which was bleeding a little. Out of nowhere, a local guy appeared and asked me about it. I explained I had fallen over and he sent his friend off somewhere then went to get me a beer. shortly after a man appeared with a first aid kit and put a plaster on my knee for me. I felt about five years old again and that stuff still stings. That summed up Kochi though, the laid back atmosphere and being made to feel like a guest everywhere put a smile on my face the whole time I was there. There was never any hidden motive with the friendliness there, people just seemed to genuinely enjoy other people's happiness. My rough plan for the next few years is to find a way of going back and living there for a while, the sunsets would keep me going when things got bad, which probably wouldn't be that bad.
Anyway, after a lot of socialising and relaxing got a train the next day to Alleppey, bumped into loads of people I met in Arambol and keep doing so, seems everyone has roughly the same plan in South India, which is always pretty rough and improvised anyway. In Alleppey I met Laramie Flick, a guy from New York who I ended up travelling with for the rest of the week, as we seemed to have exactly the same plan. Alleppey was another example of why I loved Kerala, full of warmhearted people who invited to their homes to meet their family and drink loads of chai, plus there was a huge statue of a topless mermaid along the canal.
We got a boat to Kottyam, spent about three hours out on the endless open water and saw a massive army of ducks. This may seem like a pointless story to include but I'll email the photo around and you'll see what I mean, they could have taken over if they'd wanted to. Anyway, gotten into pointless rambling about ducks, I'll move on. From kottyam got a bus to Periyar Wildlife sanctuary, where ended up staying three days and saw the odd glipmse or two of some sort of wildlife (huge samba deer, wild boar, malabar giant squirrel and some sort of small red insect). This was yet another place where the locals wanted to meet travellers and get drunk with them. I also met some guys who live near hanborough and ended up getting very drunk with them and a load of retired local guys, which was pretty similar to hanborough except with more lizards crawling around. Sadly the Elephant rides (one of the main draws for me) were cancelled as the Elephants had apparrently buggered off somewhere. The actual park was naturally very beautiful and crawling with klepto-monkeys but the lack of real animals was a let down, but the experience there was still fantastic just for the people I met, and now have a mission to get North quickly so I'll have time to meet the near-hanboro boys again in Manali by in the Himalayas. My travel buddy Laramie spent alot of this time ill in bed, he loves india but hates spicy food so has generally been ill for his whole trip and even the cornflakes here have some kind of spicy powder on them.
Next we headed to Munnar, which reminded me of Bangor in a strange way. The actual town was really small and quiet but was surrounded by huge green mountains and lakes, and tea plantations. Maybe it's coz we were high up, but I spent the whole time in a daze, falling asleep all the time and only really getting some decent photos from the experience. Yesterday myself and Laramie went our separate ways, but our paths will probably cross again. spent the day and most of the night travelling and ended up out of Kerala and in Mangalore, not sure why as there's nothing spectacular going on but couldn't be doing with the twenty four hour train ride to Gokarna, my next destination, so bottled out at two am and got a hotel in this quiet seaside town. Need to work out what I'm doing next at some point, but this internet connection is really slow so may have to stay another night. Right, that's about it, sure there are a lot more funny things that have happened, but my brain is slowly crumbling from how fantastic Kerala is, It feels like I've properly started travelling now and at some point I think I had a carefully planned route in my head. It's gone now, but shows that I am capable of the odd sensible organised moment. Was sad to leave Kerala, there was a magic about the place and I realise that untill I get to Manali it's gonna be busy and noisy from here on in, but I know that I'll be back there time and time again. LIke pretty much every travller I've met on this trip, I know that I will be back in India, there's just two much to do and see and not enough time in the world. I reckon everyone reading this should come here, you won't regret it.
... Unless there's no one reading this....

week three

Well, I should have been suspicious when things seemed to be going so well in Arambol. I should have known that when things are that good it always means that disaster is nearby. I spent my birthday on the beach, swimming and lying around all day, then headed back to my room to get ready to go out. Sadly, when I got back I realised that I was seriously burnt all over and could barely move. So, in my tradition of having tragic birthdays I spent the night (and next couple of days) limping around and whimpering, at a fantastic place but unable to do anything. Luckily because of the state I was in it seemed hilarious, but after a couple of days I thought that if I was going to be crippled and boring I may as well do it in Bangalore, so said my goodbyes and headed back to Karnataka, where very little has happened since.
Because I've already been here and seen pretty much all there is to see, this week I have mostly been sitting in the hotel, saving money and watching tv. I met my third cousins on wednesday, Adeline and Avinash, they're both really cool and will be seeing them again before I leave the city, and Avinash wants to hook up when I'm next in Goa (sadly I will have to return there as it's on my route, nevermind). But aside from that, this has been a disappointingly dull rest week, and my feet are getting itchy again so tommorrow I'm off to Mysore, then it'll be a long but hopefully worthwhile journey to Kerala. Bangalore has a real charm to it, and has plenty of shops and bars, but I want to properly start travelling now, and see a bit more nature, staying put in one place is not what I came here for, and sadly once you've been here in Bangalore for a few days it just seems like another big polluted city.
Oh, except I saw an elephant on the main road the other day, first one I've seen in India. It wasn't part of a festival or anything, just chilling with his buddy.
....Anyway, after that thrill packed tangent I'd better be off, this time next week I'm sure loads of noteworthy things will have happened, and I'll try to keep everyone updated on my exhilarating Elephant spotting exploits, think I'll go back to the hotel and see whats on Cartoon Network.
(again.)