Kerala India

This is the final part of our journey through Asia. We’ve left Bali and now face the monsoons of Southern India. Naively, I assumed the rainy season in Kerala would consist of a short burst of rain once a day with glorious sunshine and blue skies the rest of the time. In fact we were both counting on good weather, as we’ve only just started to get tans after 3 months of travelling, and lugging a year’s supply of aloe vera gel doesn’t feel worth it if its constantly raining.

We considered taking the surfboard with us over from Bali when we found out there was good surf during the monsoon season, but out of laziness, decided to leave it behind thinking we could always rent a board if it looks good (real reason is we’re both crap). Looks like it was the right decision as the sea here is like nothing I’ve seen before: gargantuan waves break haphazardly, some far out at sea and others smashing into the sand churning the water and making it murky and green. The sound of the waves crashing into the cliffs can be heard a mile off and I’ve not seen a single person go in. On the way to the beach, a girl gutting a bucket of small Pomfret told us her dad was a fisherman, but that it was a very dangerous job and they made no money.

I am now on to my third pair of flip-flops, which works out at one pair per month. It’s a mystery as to what happened to the last pair. As normal I left them outside the door of our hotel room to keep the sand in the bed to a minimum – a sandy Laura is not a happy Laura. The next day I woke to find one of them was missing. A wave of sadness swept over me as it became apparent that someone or something had stolen it. I felt genuine anger that I would have to buy another pair of flip-flops and wanted to lash out. A kid must have run off with one of them as a dare. There were no kids around to strangle, probably for the best, as I’m no warrior and would have come away worse off. The hotel manager thought it was most likely that a dog had gone off with it, which is probably true, as there are at least 10 dogs for every person here. If this is the case in the rest of India, that makes approximately 10 billion dogs on the subcontinent.

Anyway I have some new flip-flips now, they rub and my feet feel like they are slowly being grated away with each step. I reckon they’ll be perfectly broken in, in a month’s time.

Travellers tash

In the maul-like queue for the flight to Trivandrum I noticed that every man had a moustache. I’d forgotten that virtually all men and quite a few boys in India have moustaches, and if I was to be taken seriously and not appear like a boy on a school trip I would need one too. So far I have shaved my chops and am now the proud owner of a faint shadow on my upper lip. According to Laura, my micro-tash looks a bit ‘Mexican’, but once I nip the ends off and it gets a bit thicker I might just have the makings of a young Edwardian gentleman. Bravo I say!

(Pre-tash photo)