Out of India

I haven’t updated this blog since leaving India. The thing is, there it served a purpose. It was a form of therapy, a digital chaise longue, since the place blows your mind every single day.

South East Asia is a lot easier to travel. Life is more predictable here but less eventful. It’s probably more fun but less interesting.

My last blog was in Goa. It’s been three months since then and in that time I’ve got through (lost, broken or given away­) five footballs, four pairs of sunglasses, three pairs of flip flops, two watches and a man bag.

I also started travelling alone as Dave decided to fly home for a month in Mid-December.

This rattled me a bit, but after a couple of lonely days of insecurity and indecision, I decided to crack on with the trip into Kerala, South West India, as planned.

Then stuff just started happening…

Being on your own, you meet more people. You have to, if you want someone to chat to or do stuff with. For the most part, the people I’ve met have been awesome and interesting with just a mere spattering of tossers.

It is a wonderful and unique experience in life to be away from home with no responsibilities (until the coffers are dry). To have absolute freedom just for a short while and be in charge of your own destiny.

So, on with the trip…

Kuttipurum is not a tourist town. They don’t get many white visitors. So touching down there with a brash New Yorker, we were heralded (prodded, stroked and poked) as Caucasian celebrities. We played football with some lads from the local school and not for the first time on this trip, my team came second.

                                                                                           

My highlights of Fort Cochi were exploring a city-wide art exhibition, being in an audience smaller than the cast for an electrifying kung fu show, trying my hand with Chinese fishing nets and meeting some hilarious and very proud gay Indians.

 

My first Christmas away from home was spent in Varkala. It was a good one. With mes nouveaux amis français, we bought a massive kingfish from the stinky fish market and cooked and ate it with rice and ratatouille on the beach. The kingfish was washed down with Kingfisher beer until we reached a level I like to call festively pissed. Boxing Day was spent sweating out the hangover on the beach, watching eagles circle above. The waves in Varkala are the most powerful I’ve ever experienced. It is brilliant fun, like swimming in a salty washing machine.

I also wandered (if it is at all possible to wander on a moped) into a very strange elephant-oriented Hindu ceremony. A lad got in trouble during the service for asking me to take a photo of him, and much to the delight of his mates, I got in trouble for showing it to him.

After a 20-hour train to the West coast of India, I reached Mammallapurum. 2012’s New Year’s Eve celebrations were considerably tamer than previous years. I’m a bit embarrassed to admit I was woken up by the midnight fireworks. I had spent a couple of exhausting days at an orphanage for boys aged 16 and under. The first day we played football and the second day, we had an art class. They don’t get many Western visitors (the last was a French girl 6 months before) so the kids were VERY excited. Heart-breakingly, a few of the younger ones just wanted attention and resorted to climbing a perilously balanced book case just so I’d have to pick them off it. That said, the comradery between the lads was heart-warming. They were like a family of 30 brothers. The older lads made sure everyone queued up to get their Xmas present of a pen and a Milkybar Eclair. Milkybar Eclairs, by the way, just wow.

I also treated myself to a couple of Aryuvedic massages. I kid you not, they that were so invigorating it verged on narcotic. Kumar the masseuse is a man mountain with big strong hands, a big strong moustache and magic in his fingertips. Despite an ominous start after I declined to remove my boxers only to be rewarded with an excruciating, cheek-splitting wedgie. Kumar worked my pressure points until an hour later I felt like I flew the 200 yards home. Keen for more, the next day I went back and had hot herby coconut oil dripped in patterns across my forehead for an hour. I was well and truly away with the fairies by the time he told me to go home and sit in the dark for a while.

Mammallapurum is a UN heritage site and home to several spectacular ancient Hindu remnants. After climbing 200 steps in the blistering midday sun to reach a temple, a bastard monkey nicked my water bottle from out of my pocket, proceeded to unscrew the bottle cap and drink from it. To rub it in my face a bit more, it then tipped the rest on the floor.  I descended parched and bought another bottle from the same shop at the foot of the hill. After showing my photo to the shopkeeper, it was clear this wasn’t the first time this had happened and she joked that the critter was on her payroll!

My last Indian destination was Chennai. Apologies to its nine million residents, but it is a fairly charmless city and home to the World’s most annoying tuk tuk drivers. But again thanks to good company, and good food, I enjoyed the place.

On my last day, after a good few hours exploring Chennai’s not-too-bad museum, I visited a Western shopping mall and guiltily pottered around a 2-floor Marks and Spencer’s. I watched The Hobbit in 3D and a Dinosaur Adventure in 5D(!) It’s 3D plus you’re in a rollercoaster and sprayed with foam and water. It was better than The Hobbit.

After wolfing down an epic final Indian meal, I boarded a Bangkok-bound plane. On the runway, with my seatbelt fastened and lap tray upright, I began to reflect.

Here is the cliché-packed conclusion I have come up with.

Travelling India is a journey for the mind as much as anything else. For the most part, it was not a relaxing holiday. The place is constantly exciting. Your brain is alert and always stimulated. I enjoy that, but combined with the ever present inevitability of having the shits, it is exhausting.

The place is an emotional rollercoaster. You’ve gotta take the rough with the smooth. I’ve seen images that won’t ever leave me. I’ve shed tears over things that were so damn unimaginably awful (not just my haircut in Varanasi) but at times I was floored by human nature at its most beautiful.

I suppose I leave India a bit more informed about the world. Having witnessed some of the hardships of poverty, I know I need to do more than I currently do about this.

I leave as a certified curry connoisseur and with the knowledge that a motorbike is an entirely appropriate vehicle for a family of five.

Despite a knobhead in Nepal warning me that INDIA stands for: “I’d Never Do It Again.”

I’ll be back.

Cheers India, I can’t wait to please come again.