one long week

Briefly: I left Mumbai a week ago, hopping off the train a little before my planned stop at a beach town called Varkala. Varkala has the warmest sea water I've ever swum in, a lovely cliff overlooking the water on which the town is situated, and a gigantic heterogeneous crowd of various whitey types paying far too much for everything including the best coffee I've had in India.

By way of Trivanrdrum, I worked my way down to India's land's end, Kanyakumari, where tourists and Hindu devotees alike wake before dawn, clamber to the beach, and watch the sunrise en masse. Similarly they all assemble again on the beach (same beach!) to observe the sunset some twelve hours later. There's a vaguely apocalyptic atmosphere to Kanyakumari; stereos are blaring night and day, with sleep-deprived crowds marching to their calls to prayer like so many walking dead. However, there is a cool temple/statue island combo offshore, which one may visit by ferry. There are two dilapidated boats that comprise this ferry service, and the pilots, who make rounds each half hour day-in day-out, are crazy Indian race-car drivers. I rode this ferry twice (of course), and on both occasions the boats were made to chop though the waves like speedboats and to list side to side like catamarans, eliciting gasps and worried looks from the crowds (our same sleep-deprived devotees). On one of the islands, I was able to view a wind farm some twenty kilometers up the shore; the following morning I hired a taxi to take me there and back. I took a lot of pictures, climbed one of the wind-electricity-mill-things, and just felt fantastic in general. I love wind farms. I love love love watching all of the hundreds of windmills spin at different rates, covering a landscape. Okay.

Then yesterday I caught a train north again to Cochi, a town built over a 16th century Portuguese fort. I stayed at a bizarre "home stay" that included some ostensibly Christian shrines, seashells, and other grandmotherly fixtures. After a couple of nice walks I took another train up to Trichur, where I am now. I net a lot of cool travelers this week and exchanged a lot of email addresses.

There's a radio playing in this internet cafe, and there's a single by the voice that got famous singing "a little bit of ________ (woman's name) is what I ________ (verb)." This song goes "I got a girl in Paris, I got a girl in Rome...etc, etc." It's another two-chord vamp, even. How can we let this happen, people? What are we coming to? This man should be found and tortured with two chord vamps while under house arrest until he repents for the idiocy he's chosen to spend his career propagating.

I have another sad tale; a tale of being whomped below the belt by a mystery Keralan thief. This particular MKT we'll call him/her waited until I was 450 pages into Dickens' "Our Mutual Friend" before surreptitiously removing it from my bunk. Grrr! As if the nasty secondhand book is worth much at all! It was, however, a nice warning to the travelers left on the train. Kanyakumari being the last station in the line, many residents of nearby communities were prowling through the cars, casing them out for lost/left luggage and whatnot. But still, it's as if John Rokesmith and Mr and Mrs Boffin and Silas Wegg and Bella Wilfer and Mortimer Lightwood and Mr and Mrs Veneering were taken from their proper timeline and placed in stasis. I'm going to Chennai (Madras) tomorrow night, a city large enough to have a good bookstore or thirty, and there I'll get to defibrillate the frozen characters. Muhuhuhuaahahaa maniacal laughter and such.

I'll get some windfarm shots happening soon. Happy March Day tomorrow.